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Dear Ivor Novellos: You Can't Celebrate Diversity in Music Without Tackling Race

Last week the songwriting award nominations were heralded for including artists like Laura Mvula and Michael Kiwanuka – but it's not that simple

Black people have suddenly become a must-have at high-profile British awards shows. After years of racial myopia, our presence has seemingly been magnified, our melanin on display in split-leg gowns on red carpets, or trussed up in a suit and tie on stages. This, after all, is what people have been asking for for years: visible representation. The BAFTAs have been moved to introduce a diversity criteria for some of their categories; the BRIT Awards nominated a far more diverse pool this year than last; and last week Laura Mvula, Michael Kiwanuka and Skepta were among those who received nomination nods for the songwriting Ivor Novello Awards. Reporting around the nominations consistently zeroed in on the diversity of the candidates up for the awards. But that's where things start to get complicated for the Ivors.

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You'd be forgiven for not having heard much about them before. The awards aren't televised, for starters. And their remit is to highlight UK songwriting and composing accolades that, unlike the BRITs, are not tied to album sales. Generally, that means fewer nominations every year for the same two acts the music industry has been pushing aggressively since the BBC's Sound Of… poll the December before (*waves at Rag'n'Bone Man and Ed Sheeran*). And those involved in the awards understand and exploit that as a selling point. Take a recent statement given the night of the nominations announcement, by Crispin Hunt – chair of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA), which oversees the Ivors. He reckoned the "music business is morphing into the selfie business". He continued: "I think this year's nominations reflect a different bit of British music, more to do with the creativity of our figures like Laura Mvula, than just commercial success."

Fair enough. The Ivors aren't meant to just be the place that pats the biggest hitmakers on the back. Mvula, as the only black woman nominated in this year's pack, has been chosen as a representative of the awards' brand in this way, perhaps because she seems like the antithesis to the Instagram generation and slickly synthetic pop. Despite actually being very active on social media, she has authenticity bound up in her pianist fingers, her classical training and her arrangement skills.

And yet sales of Mvula's 2016 album The Dreaming Room slumped, despite it being a beautifully precise pop LP that put all of her skills on display. She subsequently lost her five-album record deal with Sony. Of that, Hunt said: "You don't necessarily need a label these days, and hopefully she'll carry on, but I think that demonstrates there's something a little bit awry about the way the music industry is working. I worry that culturally we aren't fully valuing that connection from music made by people like Michael Kiwanuka and Laura Mvula."

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