Burna Boy performed in Helsinki. Was the white ear listening?
On Thursday 13 February 2020, perhaps the most topical African artist, Burna Boy, performed in the Helsinki Ice Hall Black Box. The Nigerian singer has toured extensively this winter following the release of his 2019 album African Giant and he has been widely featured in music media around the world. One of the tour highlights for the artist himself I suspect was performing for a sold out SSE (former Wembley) arena, making him the first African artist ever to have achieved this. Journalist Aniefiok Ekpoudom reviewed the SSE arena performance in the Guardian with 5 stars, calling it a “historic night”.
Similarly, the Helsinki Ice Hall concert could on a Finnish scale be considered historic, or at least noteworthy. According to my knowledge, the 2200 people in the audience made it the biggest ever solo concert of an African musician in Finland. In comparison, Angelique Kidjo played Finlandia Hall in 2013, which has a capacity of 1700 people. Burna Boy had another full Tavastia audience on top of that. What is also noteworthy about Burna Boy's concert is that not a single media outlet in Finland mentioned the event, neither before nor after the concert. Obviously, African artists’ concerts have been written about in the past, for example Kidjo's concert in 2013 was referred to in both Turun Sanomat and Helsingin Sanomat. But why wasn't Burna Boy's concert on the radar of journalists? What do African artists have to do to get noticed by Finnish media?
A quick search of “African music” on a few big newspaper sites in Finland reveals some answers to this question. In Helsingin Sanomat, the most recent news about an African artist performing in Finland is from the spring of 2019, in an article titled “The concert of Malian musician Bassekou Kouyaté is in the world music context comparable to Eric Clapton stopping by”. In the article journalist Mari Koppinen explains that Kouyaté plays “the four-stringed ngoni-lute, an ancient African instrument of the Griot tribe” and that “traditions run really deep” in his music.
In the newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet, the most recent article about an African artist’s performance is from autumn 2018, when Dizu Plaatjies performed at the Etnosoi! festival. In the title, journalist Ole Nerdrum summarises his concert experience like this: “South-African ritual music in an exotic sound stew”. Underneath the text you can see a picture of topless Plaatjes with face paint and a feathered headdress. Does this mean an African artist performing in Finland should represent traditional music and their performance has to feature “ritual sound-stew” in order for Finnish media to write about them? Not to say that Kouyaté and Plaatjies don't deserve the attention, but is the Finnish music media really not capable of writing about African music from any other perspective than as “world music”, which is associated with ideas of racialised exoticism and primitivity?
The concept of the “white gaze” (e.g. Toni Morrison 1992), popularised by Black US writers and thinkers, could be adapted to the idea of a “white ear”. In this respect, African music is noticed from a white perspective. It is written about when it is an event by a white organiser for a white audience, which only achieves meaning in comparison to white norms or to a white artist – such as Eric Clapton. Even though I wasn't present at the concerts referred to above by HS and HBL, I dare to claim that the audience was almost exclusively white. Only when white ears listen to music by an African artist is the concert worth a review, where it receives its meaning from how different it sounds and looks from a white perspective. The concert by Burna Boy in Helsinki was organised by long-time Helsinki-based African promoter Nick Mbana (DJ Nice). The audience was clearly majority Black. This kind of event is invisible in Finnish media.
Writing about music and conceptualizing is as “world music” doesn't cater to anyone, but unfortunately African musicians find themselves in that category over and over again. This is not only an issue in Finland. Even though Burna Boy doesn't represent “world music” to the majority of his listeners, and they don't ascribe meaning to his music according to the afore-mentioned genre ideology, he is inevitably placed in that box. It was even supposed to be seen as a sign of great honour that Burna Boy's album African Giant was nominated for a Grammy in the “world music” category this year. Unfortunately the nomination also shows how white music media industries treat African music. Even though an African musician is successful in their own right, outside the “world music” scene, stages and values, they are shown their place as a representative of traditional music.
That the US Recording Academy responsible for the Grammys awards prizes with a white ear is really no surprise. Ethnomusicologist Timothy Taylor (1997) already criticised the awards in the 1990s. Back then, one could see an overwhelming pattern of prizes being awarded to white US musicians who had “collaborated” with bands representing non-white traditions. And similarly, nearly every time a white artist has been nominated in the rap category, they have also picked up the award. In fact, the Grammys have received so many allegations of racism that there is a dedicated Wikipedia page to this topic; Racism in Grammy Awards. Many writers have called the voting procedure completely ridiculous, and the reputation of the organisation hasn't been helped with this year’s allegations of sexual misconduct.
This year, the “world music” Grammy went to Angelique Kidjo. In her acceptance speech, she dedicated the prize to Burna Boy, calling him one of the artists who is changing how the African continent and its music is perceived abroad.
Those who missed Burna Boy’s concert will be glad to know that, luckily, it wasn't the first or the last time a popular African pop artist performs in Finland. Several active African promoters and DJs regularly organise events outside of white music industry structures. The next big event of Burna Boy promoter DJ Nice is on Saturday 14 March 2020, when East Africa's most popular artist Diamond Platnumz is performing at Circus Helsinki. DJ Nice also tells me that concerts featuring Tiwa Savage and Wizkid are in the pipeline. Journalists still have the chance to wake up.
Kim Ramstedt is a researcher, journalist and DJ
Originally published in Finnish 27 February 2020
Translation by Miia Laine