BTS pips the piper, sings the right tune

BTS' announcement that they will not submit their blockbuster comeback album, Arirang, to the 2027 Grammy Awards may look like just a snub in the competitive world of global music business. But it actually tells you much more that's out of whack with the guardians of a globalised pop culture. The South Korean boy band's stand against being boxed into a 'Best Asian Pop Music Performance' category should serve as an eye-opener beyond global music awards given out by the West. The band's statement - wanting music to be 'heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language' - is a direct indictment of the US Recording Academy's patronising taxonomy. It applies to other organisations, including non-Western ones too lazy to snap out of the West's thrall for putting itself at the centre, and the rest in the 'others/ethnic' category.

While Tom Cruise is an 'actor', Amitabh Bachchan becomes a 'Bollywood actor' in this double-vision. It would be ludicrous to have, say, Bob Dylan being chosen as the 'Best Nasal Singer' or Marilyn Monroe described as the 'Most Beautiful White Woman'. There's no reason why a writer who happens to be a woman should be feted as a 'female writer' while her male counterpart requires no corresponding marker. Which is why the South Korean film, Parasite, getting the Best Picture Oscar in 2019 - rather than a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar - was such a groundbreaking correction.

Reductive classifications - whether based on regional, language or gender lines - trivialise excellence, turning what should be recognised as pure and simple talent into provincial curiosities. This, especially when Seoul, Mumbai and Bogota are as much a Spotify track or a Netflix show destination as LA, Berlin or London.