Politics and farce of Grammys (oh, and Anoushka Shankar is nominated)

Hurray for us - and congratulations to Anoushka Shankar for getting a Grammy nomination for Best World Music Album. On the surface, it’s a cause for celebration, because of a) the quality of her music, and b) the inherently Indian need to seek validation from the West (it’s understandable; 190 years of colonial rule will do that). But should it be?

For starters, who even cares about the Grammys anymore? They’re suit-wearing dinosaurs, out of touch with reality and living under the assumption that nothing new has happened musically in the past 3,000 years.

On top of it is the tokenism and the farcical, hollow red-carpet spectacle nature of it. Another common complaint is how the awards are basically just a puerile celebration of the music business. So there’s that.

They’re culturally relevant still, maybe - but only as a punchline. Something to watch and complain about, like the elimination segment of a reality TV show.

More troublesome, then, is the title of this so-called award. Why is “world music” still a thing?! And why, pray tell, are the Grammys using it, given their influence and reach and stature and prestige and blah-blah-blah?

Let’s quickly try to understand this very contentious term. “World music” basically means nothing. It was a convenient little label added to music unfamiliar to western ears - you know, stuff coming out of strange, otherworldly lands like India and the Middle East and eastern Europe and African countries.

But it’s also used for (often east-meets-west) collaborations, in place of the sociologically blunted and irrelevant “fusion”, as well as cutting-edge and experimental sounds from around the world. Fundamentally, there’s a case to be made that it clubs together all non-English-driven music – "local music" - from places that are not America or the rich/powerful European countries.

According to this impassioned defence of the phrase, it was coined - in the marketplace - in 1987 as a marketing strategy meant to highlight music that would otherwise be lost and unheard. An answer to the question: how do you sell music that resists settling into neat little pre-existing packages?

“Let’s bundle it all together,” they thought (cleverly), “and call it something cool and accessible.”

A simple record label categorisation to maximise profits (of course) which could maybe lead to greater visibility for the artists (oh, well). If we really must bring in the other side, then there’s the whole “if it ain’t broke…” angle to it (as the article linked mentions), as also the subjective nature of assessing intentions.

But that’s not how it works. We’re in 2017 now (almost), so let’s not cling to regressive tropes simply out of convenience. Just a glance at the word itself - “world music” - implies an "othering" of legitimate, supposedly obscure styles of music.

It seems to dismiss individual voices in favour of disconnected clusters; the “world music” pile at a music store (or, um, iTunes)  is just as likely to contain electro-Carnatic experiments from Tamil Nadu as an Israeli collaboration between the oud and the djembe.

Even the Grammy nominations include Shankar, as well as Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a South African choral group singing in local traditions. And an album by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. Where’s the link?

It’s an ongoing debate, wherein “world music” seems to impose a distant cultural inferiority to these forms of music - a kind of suggestion that all music that isn’t in English and from the power centres of the mainstream music world is automatically exotic and alien.

The ghettoising of a chunk of music and musicians has been met with great anger. It’s an unfair insinuation; possibly racist and most likely condescending and patronising. Further, it overlooks the identity, the nuances, and the unique quirks of the music itself.

Sure, these are textured conversations that, in the long-run, probably need to be had (in greater depth than here) to arrive at some kind of an understanding. But there’s so obviously such an opposition to its usage, and it’s been around for a while, so how tone-deaf do the Grammys have to be to still be using it?

Can they not hear the protests from their ivory towers? Today, in the world of music, given the access to different cultures that the internet allows, violent experimentation with other forms is practically built into the psyche of the exploratory modern musician.

Everyone’s trying out different recipes - to varying degrees of success - even in the mainstream, so it seems an opportune time to find a categorisation that doesn’t piss off (and piss on) a large percentage of people.

This takes on greater significance when you look at what’s going on in the world, politically. Donald Trump will soon be the most powerful man in the world; there’s a strong anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe; Brexit happened; and that’s before we even get into the situation in India right now.

So, yes, lots of terrible things are on the horizon, and lots of them are already happening. It’s times like these where the arts world - the establishments, in particular - needs to double down and make any kind of statement, even a hollow one, to become more inclusive and welcoming.

Getting rid of this one thing, while no doubt small and probably irrelevant in the larger scheme, would have been a start.

Also read: Indian classical music needs to stop being boring