Inside the Race and Gender Inequalities of the 2024 Dance/Electronic Grammy Award Nominations

The 2024 Grammy nominations are officially here, and the lack of representation of Black producers and women has none gone unnoticed. 

Since its inaugural ceremony in 1959, the Grammy Awards has grown both in scope and influence. The Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammys, has continuously adapted the award categories to reflect the ever-expanding diversity of musical genres. What began as a primarily American-centric event has evolved into a global celebration of music, with categories recognizing artists and recordings from around the world. 

Despite its global presence and supposed cultural acuity, the 2024 Grammys nominations appear to be going backward in one genre; with three Dance/Electronic category nominations given entirely to white men, both fans and artists have criticized the Recording Academy as well as the music industry as a whole. The uproar is not only due to the lack of Black representation but also the fact that the dance music genre is rooted deeply in Black culture and history.

As Chicago-based house DJ Gene Farris put it, “The shammys (Grammys) is wack af.. They just played us big time people of color per usual. It like having the country music category with no country people in the category.” He continued, “We are better than just Beyoncé remixes. I said what I said… my two f**kin cents as a person of color who’s been making House music for over 30 years.”

At the 2023 Grammy Awards, Beyoncé won the Best Dance/Electronic Music Album for ‘Renaissance.’ Several dance music producers helped her produce the album, including Honey Dijon, a long-time Black and trans house music artist from Chicago. 

Singer Aluna from AlunaGeorge also spoke out about what she felt was painful a lack of Black representation in the Dance/Electronic category of the 2023 Grammys. In a bold statement, she plastered a collage of faces on her Instagram page in an effort to show the lack of diversity among the nominees. Pictured are Kaskade, deadmau5, Fred Again.., Skrillex, David Guetta, and several white male producers. 

Aluna said, “The Best Dance/Electronic Album nominees this year are ALL WHITE MEN. Out of the 3 dance categories, no Black people were nominated – the dance/electronic categories only rewards primary artists and producers, so Flowdan and Coi Leray are not nominees because of this.” Flowdan is featured on Skrillex’s “Rumble” and Coi Leray on David Guetta’s “Baby Don’t Hurt Me,” both nominated for different awards.

According to Aluna, dance music fans should take a moment to celebrate artists like Peggy Gou, Channel Tres, Jamie Jones, Honey Dijon, Shermanology, and Nia Archives. Although many feel like the Dance/Electronic nominations were not fair to Black artists and women, the Grammys as a whole did right by Sza and Victoria Monét, who are the two most nominated artists in the 2024 Grammys.