Jian Ghomeshi, tomorrow, please don't say "African music"

Today the CBC promo-dude described Beninese star Angelique Kidjo as “the undisputed queen” (I think he said “queen”) “of African music.”Wrong, wrong, wrong. And that has nothing to do with Kidjo.Kidjo is an outstanding singer with a hugely successful career many albums and tours long. She’s loved by audiences and critics across the globe.But how can someone be “queen” of something that doesn’t exist?For two decades as an Africentric radio DJ at CJSR FM88, I reminded audiences that there is no such thing as “African music” (singular), any more than there is “European music” (singular) or “Asian music” (singular). Who would ever put Johnny Rotten and Rachmaninov in the same sentence, just because they’re from the same “race”? Their musics have nothing to do with each other. Who puts the music of Japan and Lebanon together, even though they’re both Asian? No one. The musics of Senegal have nothing to with, and sound nothing like, the musics of Somalia. The musics of Tunisia and Togo, South Africa and Sudan, Mali and Malawi—they’re not only distinct from each other by country, but inside each country. So claiming any one artist could be “queen” of them (categories that can’t be compared) is absurd.
Grouping the cultural production of one billion people of 55 highly diverse countries together is profoundly misleading, although it’s typical of how most Westerners discuss anything or anyone from any of those 55 countries. It’s how they talk about our 3000+ languages (“Do you speak African?”), our cuisines (“African food”), our clothing, our religions, and our civilisations (assuming they know we have them stretching back 6000 years, including, of course, Ancient Egypt).Jian Ghomeshi, when you talk with Kidjo on Wednesday, please drop the phrase “African music,” and don’t call Kidjo its “undisputed queen.” No matter how excellent she is, she can’t be queen of something that doesn’t exist, and the claim is an insult to the thousands of other recording artists that the copy writer has never heard of from 55 countries on the world’s second-largest continent.Please be part of de-stereotyping the lives and realities and cultures of an entire “race” of nations.