The award for Best Global Music Album, reserved for international performers exhibiting "non-European, indigenous traditions", was first presented to
Mickey Hart in
1992 for the album
Planet Drum. In 1996, Academy trustees attempted to solve the problem of "compressing 75% or more of the world's music into a single award category" by broadening the definition of "world music" to include non-Western classical music. Beginning in
2001, award recipients included the
producers,
engineers, and/or
mixers associated with the nominated work in addition to the recording artists. Following the
45th Grammy Awards (2003), the award was split into two separate categories for
Best Traditional World Music Album and
Best Contemporary World Music Album. In 2012, the two categories were merged back to Best World Music Album. In 2020, The Recording Academy announced it would be changing the name of the category to Best Global Music Album.
Angelique Kidjo has won the category the most, with five wins (four of which have been since 2016). The second group to win most often is
Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who have won four times during the combined history of Global/World categories.
Soweto Gospel Choir have three wins in the Global/World categories. In the single merged category,
Ravi Shankar and
Ry Cooder have both won twice. Angelique Kidjo also has the most nominations in the combined Global/World history with twelve additional nominations.
Anoushka Shankar has the second most nominations in the combined categories with nine nominations. In the single, merged Global category, artists from Brazil have won the most times with five wins, the USA have won four times, Benin has also won on four occasions, India and South Africa each have three wins, Mali and France have both had artists win twice. ==Recipients==