Not sure if this is some sort of random accompanying photo or a fixed choice? Okay, I can see both sides of the controversy when Paul Simon disregarded the South African cultural boycott when recording Graceland. But to use the image of a white guy from Queens, NY who is the poster child for cultural appropriation for the “African Traditions” music genre is beyond ridiculous and really needs to be corrected.
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Hahah! I had the exact same thought when i saw this yesterday! 
The genre pix are chosen by mysterious algorithms, sometimes they change as well. Most of the time I have Lady Gaga as the face for Americana 
but Paul Simon for African Traditions is a particularly egregious example 
Thanks for confirming it’s an algorithm but looks like I’m not only one seeing it.
Example on a lesser scale of the dangers of AI that’s been in the news. But in this case it isn’t simply silly pairings like Taylor Swift & “Indie Folk” or Lady Gaga & “Americana” but truly culturally offensive.
Next we’ll see Al Jolson in blackface representing “Jazz” (?)
Roon needs to revisit this algorithm’s parameters. Does someone actually look at this Feedback section? Is there a way of flagging this?
Yeah I totally agree that it’s offensive in this case and who knows what else it may come up with, like in your blackface example.
@support this really needs to be looked at
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Not any worse than Eddie van Halen as the pic for R & B.
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Just as, but worse than the Tyler Swift and Gaga cases
Yeah, that’s pretty bad. Which raises the question: who was funkier… EvH or Paul Simon?
EDITED BY MODERATORS: do not make personal attacks on Roon Staff or other users
Hey Rich,
Before we dive in we should clarify that Paul Simon is the face of African Traditions in your library. Also, don’t make insulting generalizations about Roon developers or staff if you’d like to continue using this platform.
Here’s African Traditions in my Roon… Tinariwen - currently the greatest musical ensemble on Earth.
The representative images you see for genres are based on your library as well as other factors - such as trending albums/artists in a particular genre. Do you have Graceland, or several other Paul Simon albums in your library? Do those albums outnumber what you would consider true African Traditions artists?
If so, that’s the likely cause of what you’re experiencing. Add any number of representative African Traditions albums from Amou Sangare, Fela Kuti, Tinariwen, Ali Farka Touré, Boubacar Traoré, Amadou et Mariam, Terakaft and you’ll see those artists instead. It’s a library thing, not a Roon thing. Hope this helps. 
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Hey Jamie - Thanks for your reply.
Okay, I have 312 albums in my library identified as “African Traditions.” (There would be considerably more but looks like many albums by artists such as Cesaria Evora, Tamikrest and Abdullah Ibrahim as well as other South African jazz releases are not identified as such. It is not a genre label I have used for the 15K+ albums from my NAS but do allow Roon to append Genres. Qobuz is the other source for the 22,737 albums in my Roon library.)
Of those only 3 appear to be credited to primarily white artists/groups: Simon’s Graceland, Bela Fleck and Khruangbin.
Over 40 are credited to Fela. Looks like Ali Farka Toure might be next @ 10 albums. Six from Boubacar Traore. I have played albums by these artists considerably more frequently than Paul Simon and/or Graceland.
I can only surmise that Roon tends to look for the most broadly “popular” artists/album identified with the genre for the Home page, which seems to have led to some questionable pairings. (BTW - when I click on the Africa Traditions home link the genre specific page does feature Fela as my image, similarly to your above image w/Tinariwen, who yes are great!)
Sorry about my sarcasm, but it appears I’m not the only one getting a cringeworthy pairing of Paul Simon & African Traditions and I can only guess that it has been generated because Graceland is likely by far the most “popular” album identified as such, so when it is present in the users library…
(And I did attribute this to an Algorithm and not Roon staff. Overall, after years of avoidance I am really impressed with Roon and recently committed to lifetime subscription.)
Cheers
For what it’s worth Jamie, it’s not the piccie when entering the genre, it’s the home screen:
When entering the genre (in my case) i have 64 albums labeled African Traditions of which one (1) is Paul Simons Graceland. The rest are fine, Femi Kuti, Youssou NDour, et al…
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Seems so as this was the explanation provided (in the thread I linked above) for Lady Gaga previously appearing for Americana and Roots Rock for me in the Genre overview pictures, apparently due to a single popular soundtrack album labeled as such, which I didn’t have in my library (nor any other Gaga releases)
I didn’t think then nor now that this is a great algorithm
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Yeah, it would seem that the algorithm should not (only) look at the popularity of a single title but the relative number of the artist’s albums with that genre label and/or use a cut-off so it is not being based on solely a couple of albums (thumb on scale syndrome).
An artist with a large number of titles with that genre appellation would be more indicative that the artist is indeed of note AND representative of the genre.
Or more simply, remove “African Traditions” from Graceland, because, well, IMO it ain’t.* It’s not identified as “Zydeco” right? Just leave it at “International Fusion”…
- Alternatively, just about all American popular music can be traced back to “African Traditions” going back to Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s “Le Banjo” (which funnily enough doesn’t seem to come up as a Gottschalk composition via Roon Search function)
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Hey @Rich_Borow - you can remove unwanted Roon genre tags from any album you like using the metadata editor.
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Yeah, I kind of remember you being fairly vocal toward me in your opinion about it in the past. Something like “cute, now get it fixed”… I’m just the delivery boy; I’m not the baker.
Sorry if I came across like that, I reread these posts and don’t see that I was aggressive to you. If you want to point it out to me, I’m happy to reconsider. I criticized a rather poor algorithm. The only thing that maybe can be construed as aggressive as far as I can tell was that I called it “cute” when you offered the explanation that Beyoncé may become the picture for Country if she contributes to a wildly successful Johnny Cash album. I appreciate that you are not the developer, but you have to admit that this would be a silly algorithmic choice.
I said “thanks” more than once and just asked if you couldn’t refer this to the devs, as Gaga for Roots Rock and Americana simply makes no sense just because of one soundtrack album she appears on, that has these genres among many others, when I had neither that album nor any Gaga albums at all in my library (and hence the “it is based on your library” is at least in part questionable - though as I confirmed back then, other choices were indeed influenced by the library).
As mentioned then, the Americana pic suddenly changed for me to showing Calexico which made sense. Not sure why it changed but OK
Ok then @Suedkiez, edited. 
What each person sees in the genre images will be different. It’s based on a range of factors. Items and artists in your library are one factor, popular/trending artists/albums for the genre are factored in as well. The libraries of Roon customers with tastes similar to yours are weighed as well - as they are with some other Roon features, Daily Mixes & Roon Radio, for example.
Here are my genre images:
… yours are likely to be different. If I’m awake and breathing, there’s a good chance I’m listening to The Stones. So, they’re used for Rock/Pop. For a while, that image was The Dead 
The Stones artist image is one I custom added to Roon. (Hyde Park, July, 1969) The combination of factors that come to bear on Genre images makes it impossible for us to “fix it” when people don’t like what they’re seeing.
But when people fly off the rails and make sweeping, illogical generalizations about Roon’s political/cultural/racial sensitivity, it’s insulting and grossly unwarranted. Why do people automatically go there? I mean, we’re the same people who use Miles Davis and Kind of Blue for nearly every artist/album example we use. It’s weird that people make such ugly accusations. We don’t create the metadata, we provide it. Can we be a little kinder to each other?
A lot of what you see is dictated by your individual library and libraries of other customers with listening tastes like yours. There’s no way to make every customer happy with every image we use for every genre no matter how hard we try, but we do try. I had somebody yell at me in a PM because Bowie was used for Glam Rock, I didn’t even know what to say. Thank heaven it wasn’t Moot the Hoople, I might’ve been killed.
Addendum: I asked a few other Roon staffers what they see for African Traditions. One saw Paul Simon, another Fela, another Ali Farka Toure, I get Tinariwen.
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Thanks. I agree completely with
I don’t know what was said above as it was moderated before I read it.
I also agree that the choices should to some extent have to do with personal libraries, this makes total sense. My last sentence in the old thread was
And yes Roon can’t please everyone every time and there will be less than ideal choices. Some genres have overarching representatives that may have a very high weight. Few would argue that the Stones are wrong for Rock or Dylan for Singer/Songwriter. Choosing them may not represent my library perfectly and I might be more pleased by a more personal and still correct choice. but it’s not wrong.
However, an algorithm that chooses completely nonsensical pictures based on the apparent weighting of single albums, like the Gaga example for Roots Rock (uninfluenced by my library) has potential for improvement. I think this is obvious and can’t be argued away.
Sometimes this may be amusing or annoying, but there are cases where it can be problematic. The last years have seen many discussions about algorithms or pattern-matching “AIs” showing biases, exhibiting racism, sexism, etc. This is interesting and important stuff. Nobody accused Google developers to be racist in these cases, either, but the stuff they built could exhibit such traits. It is a topic that algorithm / AI developers must be conscious of these days.
The history of music is full of racism, of course, and people can be sensitive to this. When Paul Simon is chosen as the representative for African Traditions, it is problematic, and remains so even if a person only has Graceland from this genre in their library. But as @Rich_Borow showed above, this isn’t even the case for him. It seems that just like the Gaga case, it is simply swayed by Graceland being so successful generally.
I would argue that this is a topic that Roon should be conscious of. It may improve the choices in general and help avoid embarrassments.
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Well said, @Suedkiez, and I didn’t mean to imply that you are making these ugly generalizations - just that it happens a lot in these threads.
I’m happy to go to the devs, again, and ask if there’s anything that can be adjusted. But, as @mike has said many times in the past there’s no “right” artist or genre image, it’s a matter of personal taste.
For listeners whose tastes have opened to Roots Rock/Americana/Roots Country through the A Star is Born soundtrack the image would be fine and make sense. At Roon, we’re the welcoming record store clerks who are cool with that, not the ones who would laugh at them.
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I didn’t think that you implied that I made these generalizations, all good
Agreed. I just think that there can be wrong pictures, and sometimes the wrong pictures can legitimately be seen as offensive.
I think we have to agree to disagree here. I maintain that Gaga is not a representative of Roots Rock just because she appears on a soundtrack album where other artists appear that may be such representatives, and hence the tags appear on the album. I appreciate that this is hard as the album has the tags. I just don’t think it’s correct.
Again, this case is not killing me but falls into the amusing category. It’s just another example in the context of discussing the awareness that such weighting can create more problematic cases as we have seen.
Understood. So if there’s a Black African user of Roon, it seems consistent with this goal to avoid waving Paul Simon at them as a representative of African Traditions, which as we have seen can happen even if the person has lots of others representatives in their library.
Once again, this is a hard problem to solve, I get that. But that doesn’t make it not problematic. I guess there are many such possibilities we can’t even think of.