Grammy: 5 Things To Know About 22-Year-Old South African Who Edged Out 5 Nigerian Giants

A South African singer and songwriter, Tyla Laura Seethal, won the first ever Grammy for Best African Music Performance with “Water” at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards held on Sunday night.

Tyla defeated the five Nigerian music stars nominated for the same category – Ayra Starr, Davido, Burna Boy, Asake, and Olamide, at the awards which held in Los Angeles, USA.

Here are five things to know about Tyla:

1. She was born into a coloured family of Zulu, Indian, Mauritian, and Irish descent, in Johannesburg, South Africa’s biggest city and capital of Gauteng province, on January 30, 2002.

2. She matriculated from Edenglen High School in 2019. Her academic aspiration was to get a degree in mining engineering, but she later decided to commit to her music career full-time.

3. In 2021, after the domestic success of her 2019 debut single, “Getting Late” featuring Kooldrink, the 22-year-old signed with Epic Records, an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America.

4. Tyla rose to international stardom when she released her 2023 single “Water”, which secured the top ten in sixteen countries including the United Kingdom and the United States.

5. Her sterling music career includes her live performance on The Bianca Show in Sweden and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in the United States, but her single “Water” was the first song by a South African soloist to enter the US Billboard Hot 100 in 55 years.