While the rest of the world has its awards and systems of recognition, the American awards for music and cinema are still the most sought after. The Oscars in cinema and the Grammys in music are still seen as the gold standard in recognising the best in the field. However, are these awards truly global? Or are they just about an insular group of creative people that know little about global artistes?
The Grammys are largely America-centric. Their gaze may extend to Europe and occasionally a little beyond, but not much. It is a mark of how truly global K Pop has become in recent times that Jungkook and BTS were seen to perform at the Grammys.
In some ways the Grammys are more inclusive than before.
Both the Oscars and the Grammys pay tribute to artists that passed away in the past year. Neither thought it necessary to mention either Lata Mangeshkar or Bappi Lahiri.
The Grammys claim to be music's biggest night – a laughable proposition, given how prodigious, massively influential and widely worshipped Lata Mangeshkar was in not just India but music in general.
Lata Mangeshkar was a colossus – no one present at the Grammys could possibly hope to match up.
It is inconceivable that they forgot to include Lata-tai. We can only conclude they felt that this brilliant singer and her matchless contribution to the world of music was unworthy of mention? Either that or they were oblivious to this fact, in which case this is ignorance of the worst kind for a platform that thinks of itself as 'global'.
This is just another example of the self-involved gaze of the West and its own misguided belief in its own exceptionalism. They neither understand art from elsewhere, nor do try to do so.
This smug self-satisfaction and insularity becomes clear when someone of the caliber of Lata Mangeshkar and stalwarts such Dilip Kumar, Bappi Lahiri and others are overlooked.
This shows these awards to be neither inclusive nor diverse considering how many the world over have adored Lata Mangeshkar’s matchless voice for 7 decades or more.
The peerless Lata Mangeshkar doesn’t need recognition from those who are ignorant of her, feel a lot of people. Hankering after such endorsements from the West is meaningless. Most brilliant Indian musicians never received Grammys either. Does that make our artistes any less worthy or beloved? No – it just makes the West more ignorant and it means they miss out on beautiful music that they deem to be unworthy... simply because they don’t know it.
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