From The Top: I did not watch the GRAMMYs and do not intend to

Sunday was just like any other day, perhaps even above average compared to others. I woke up slightly hungover following a highly successful opening night of Bernstein’s Candide at LA Opera. I drank coffee at Alfred’s Coffee in West Hollywood with an old friend whom I have not seen since 2012. I went to the gym, grabbed some groceries and then went home, where I cooked myself a dinner of roasted chicken and vegetables before finishing up some assignments and heading to bed with The Deer Park by Norman Mailer.

What I did not do on Sunday, however, was watch the 60th annual Grammy Awards.

For someone who is as big a music fan as I am, I have an astonishingly low level of respect for the Recording Academy. I’m not much of a popular music guru, but even I can acknowledge that there is a disconnect between the acclaim artists garner throughout the year versus who ends up with nominations and awards. This claim is true in the classical and jazz categories as well. Furthermore, I don’t think I’ve been happy with the outcome of the awards show since 2007, when Amy Winehouse swept winning three of the four major categories. That’s also probably the last time I watched the complete telecast. Ever since, I find that the Grammys honors mediocre talent and lacks in proper racial and gender representation.

I can’t tell you many specifics of the telecast because I refused to watch it. Everything I’m reporting I read from aggregate articles from major publications. From what I can tell, based on the outcome from all categories presented at the main ceremony, only one of those winners was a woman — Alessia Cara won Best New Artist (over SZA, which is also a shock). Ed Sheeran, the only male nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance, won over the four women who dominated the category. Of the five nominees honored for Album of the Year, Lorde was the only female. She was also the only nominee in that category not asked to perform live at the show. Of the two women nominated for Song of the Year, only one was a woman of color: Julia Michaels, who is Latina. SZA, the most nominated woman (and woman of color) on this year’s ballot with five nominations, didn’t win a single award. And finally, Kesha, who has been the face of the #MeToo movement in the music industry, was honored with two nominations and, from what I can tell, executed an incredibly powerful performance of “Praying” during the telecast. However, she, too, left the Grammys empty-handed.

Commence the #GrammysSoMale movement.

Ultimately, I am unsure of the statistics regarding women at the Grammys since its inception. If I weren’t on deadline, I’d calculate my own data regarding how many of those women are women of color. Thankfully, The New York Times conducted some of this research for me. It was reported that in the last six years, of the 899 people that were nominated for Grammy Awards in all categories, only 9 percent were women. These statistics, however, don’t include women of color. Regardless, even recording artist Janelle Monae noticed this trend when she tweeted recently that “2017 was a 6-year low for female artists, only 16.8% of popular artists were women.”

It seems that the Recording Academy nominates just enough women to appease voters, and subsequently the public. For example, Solange’s A Seat at the Table was one of the highest-reviewed albums last year. The entire album was pure art. But she only garnered one nomination (and subsequent win) for Best R&B Performance for “Cranes in the Sky.” Solange didn’t get a single nomination in any of the general categories. Was her album too politically charged for the snowflakes that make up the majority of the Recording Academy? Probably. But that’s what made it so great.

The problems with the Grammys aren’t limited to the popular categories, either. The classical categories are horrendously dominated by white men. Of the 10 conductors nominated for Best Orchestral Performance and Best Opera Recording, respectively, not a single one was female or a person of color. But that’s not necessarily the voters’ faults. It’s society’s. There just aren’t enough female conductors or conductors of color that are able to achieve the same level of success as their white counterparts. I love classical music with every fiber of my being, but I am also not the first to agree that the field is insanely whitewashed and male-dominated. How do classical musicians expect to remain competitive in a world that prefers Ed Sheeran to Ethel Smyth if they’re unwilling to give more opportunities to underrepresented communities?

Politics aside, the Recording Academy also just honors sh-tty performers and performances. Is Bruno Mars really better than those nominated (and those who weren’t)?  Is he better than SZA, or Lana Del Rey, or literally anyone with a sense of rhythm? Absolutely not. But no matter how much the internet protests over the apparent lack in representation, the Recording Academy refuses to listen. I really hope next year’s Grammys include a more diverse roster of nominees. But I’m not holding my breath. It will take many more years before there is equal representation among all. We, as musicians, must do more than wait. We must continue to fight.

But until then, I’ll be leaving the Grammy Awards on read.

Arya Roshanian is a graduate student studying library and information science. His column, “From The Top,” runs Tuesdays.