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Three-time Grammy-winning composer Ricky Kej discusses his musical route, ground-breaking new-age album ‘Break of Dawn,’ and the ultimate power of music to heal the mind.
This musical journey with Indian roots raises awareness of mental wellbeing on a global scale with its Grammy nomination.
With his most recent album, Break of Dawn, three-time Grammy winner Ricky Kej continues to reinvent world music and has been nominated for his fourth Grammy. Kej, who is hailed as a pioneer of wellness music with Indian roots, addresses mental health issues in his most recent compositions by fusing traditional Indian Raags with contemporary therapeutic ideas. As the first solo Indian artist to be recognised in this way since the renowned Pandit Ravi Shankar, Kej’s nomination not only solidifies his reputation as a global music visionary but also advances Indian classical music’s legacy on the international scene.Kej talks about his feelings over his fourth Grammy nomination and what’s to come in this exclusive interview with News18.
Excerpts from the interview:
First of all, congratulations for your fourth Grammy nomination for your album ‘Break of Dawn.’ How does it feel for you? Like three times a winner, fourth nomination, does it feel the same every time? How is it different from the previous three years?
(laughs) This is a question that I’ve asked so many times but it’s a great question because, for me, the feeling does not reduce at all. Because the logical thought would be that you won, you’ve been nominated four times, and the feeling constantly reduces. But the thing is that I constantly grow as a musician with every year. I constantly grow as a person and since all of my music has a very important cause associated with it. So, you know, I’m learning more about these causes. My knowledge is increasing and growing as a human being. This album, in my opinion, is my best work ever and I feel it’s the culmination of all of these ideas, thoughts, and knowledge that I’ve gained over the last 25 years of my musical career. So it feels really good to be validated for this album.
I have heard in your recent interview, how you said that each album of yours feels like your best work till date. What about Break of Dawn made you feel it represents your personal growth or evolution as an artist?
For me, my main cause since I’ve been a child has been the environment. Even before I knew what the meaning of the word environmentalist was, I guess I was an environmentalist as a really small child. And so all of my music reflects either the environment or some kind of social cause or social impact around those areas, because the environment cannot be taken in isolation. Now what happened was that a few years ago, I was exposed to this beautiful Indian philosophy, Hindu-Buddhist philosophy, which said that the impurities of the environment are a direct reflection of the impurities of the mind.
If you want to purify the environment, first you have to purify the mind. And that seems so obvious, you know, that if you’ve got a pure mind, then you’re going to be compassionate to society; you’re going to be compassionate to the environment, to wildlife, to animals, to everything around us, to basically all life. So it was that thought that got me to make Break of Dawn, which is all about promoting mental wellness through music and through Indian-rooted music.
So basically there are nine songs in the album. I’ve taken nine Indian classical rags. I’ve composed each of those nine songs based on an Indian classical rag and that’s the album.
Can you walk us through the creative process and the inspiration behind your album, Break of Dawn? What message did you want to convey with this album?
The creative process basically is that, as I mentioned, I did a lot of research to figure out which rags would work best to promote mental wellness. And then I created these pieces of music, worked with some amazing musicians, flute players, sitar players, violinists, an orchestra from Los Angeles and, you know, some amazing singers.
There are no lyrics in the album, but we’ve got some non-lyrical vocals like alaps and sargams and things like that. So, and crafting it in such a way that it had a strong scientific backing. So I worked with institutes all over the world to figure out what kind of music would have a therapeutic effect on the mind.
And we did a strong collaboration with Stanford Global Health and with Stanford School of Biodesign, which is basically from Stanford University in California in America. And they, in fact, gave us a very strong citation where they congratulated me on addressing the global burden of mental health through Indian-rooted wellness music. And I’ve been working with institutes all over the world to have enough data and knowledge on this music such that, you know, doctors will be able to actually, the end goal is that to get doctors to actually prescribe this music to their patients for mental wellness, just like how they would prescribe physiotherapy or medicines and things like that.
You’ve mentioned recently that awards and nominations serve as a key factor in doing bigger and better things. How have the recognitions you have received so far impacted your career and the projects that you choose?
It shaped my life a lot, actually, because doing the kind of music that I do, which is very niche music, right? It’s not mainstream music; it’s not music that, you know, that’s what hundreds of millions of people will be listening to. There’s a very specific and very loyal audience for this music.
And I’m very glad to have and to enjoy that very loyal fan following, which is very quality fan following. So the thing is that awards and recognitions, as you correctly mentioned, what happens is that it shapes your career simply because it helps you open doors; it gives you a platform for spreading awareness on the various causes that are very important to me, which are very close to my heart, spreading them to a wider audience, and also helping me collaborate with musicians that I’ve always wanted to collaborate with and learn from these musicians. So basically, just honing your art form, getting your art form better, right, and ensuring that the causes that I’m associated with and advocating have their desired impact.
We also have other Indian artists like Anoushka Shankar and Radhika Vekaria nominated this year. Do you feel a sense of pride and joy watching more Indian talent represented ?
Of course, Anushka has been representing us for a very long time. But of course, all of these musicians are from the Indian diaspora. They are all of Indian origin. Anushka has already been nominated about nine or ten times. She’s absolutely brilliant. One of the best musicians. Radhika is again from the Indian diaspora, never lived in India, but a very important part of our Indian diaspora. She has got a brilliant album out. We have Chandrika Tendon, who is such a brilliant entrepreneur and somebody who is making India proud on various levels, not just in music, but in various levels making India proud. So it’s very nice to see that. Even last year, we had Shakti that actually got nominated and even won. We had Rakesh Chaurasia who did a beautiful collaborative album with Ustad Zakir Hussain and with Bela Fleck and actually ended up winning a Grammy. So I think Indian classical music and traditional forms of music are being represented constantly on the international stage
and winning us accolades and making us proud.
6. A quick, rapid fire:
Who is your music icon?
I would say definitely Pandit Ravi Shankar because Pandit Ravi Shankar single-handedly made Indian classical music mainstream all over the world and he’s basically the person, the ambassador of Indian music to the world and he made the sitar a commonly known instrument everywhere. So I’m hugely inspired by him and he broke cultural barriers and collaborated with some of the greatest musicians ever. So I’m hugely inspired by him.
A contemporary Indian musician you enjoy listening to.
For me, my favourites are Salim Suleiman. I think they’re amazing because they don’t just work in film music where they’ve done a great job; they’ve also worked with other composers and they come up with such amazing, brilliant, independent music and help the entire musical fraternity and upcoming musicians to hone their talent. So I think I’m hugely inspired by these two brothers.
If you weren’t a musician, what do you think Ricky Kej would be known for?
Just a musician and nothing else. That is absolutely nothing that I know how to do and nothing that I’m interested in.
What’s the biggest challenge you face each time you work on an album?
There is, to be honest, no challenge actually, simply because challenges and writer’s block and all of that stuff happen when you are asked to make music. When somebody is telling you to make music and they give you a deadline, you have to constantly think about what somebody else is trying to think about. Like, for example, a director gives you a brief and the director says that I want this kind of music and you’re constantly thinking whether the director will like the music and the director says that you’ve got one week to deliver this. That’s when writer’s block happens.
But with the kind of music that I do, where I’m constantly making music from the heart and I’m making music that I want to create and I create this music without any deadlines. So there is no such thing as a writer’s block. So it’s not a huge challenge, actually.
Which musician did you grow up listening to?
A musician that I grew up listening to was Stuart Copeland, the drummer of The Police and one of the greatest drummers in history—I mean, the greatest drummer in the history of—and I got to collaborate with him on my last album. So that was a huge experience. But yeah, he’s a musician that I grew up listening to
With Indian film music at an all-time high in popularity, what language would you most love to create music for?
I think I’ve basically composed music in pretty much every popular Indian language and living Indian language, including the tribal dialects from Odisha, from North Karnataka, from Tamil Nadu, from the Northeast, and Rajasthani folk music. So the thing is that I think when it comes to Indian languages, I’m pretty much sorted and I would love to do more and more work in Indian languages, especially the tribal dialects.
As a musician who has performed in so many countries, has travel ever influenced your process of composing music? Is there a particular genre that has had your heart over the years?
Yes, true. I’ve travelled all over the world and I’ve listened to all sorts of music. But I believe that what inspires me the most is indigenous forms of music, like how we call them tribal forms of music in India. So you have First Nations music in Canada, you have Native American music in the United States and you have Peruvian music; you have Brazilian music. So I love these ancient forms of music which the indigenous musicians have because what do they sing about? They sing mainly about nature; they sing about co-existence with all life and coexistence with the elements of nature and I love those thematic elements simply because there’s a lot that we can actually learn from them.
Coming back to Break of Dawn, how do you think you know music really impacts topics like mental health? You know it plays a major role How is it? What were your thoughts when you were creating this album?
So the thing about mental health is that and music is that it’s pretty obvious that when you think about it that music can you know soothe you music can calm you you know and when you think about it like you know when you’re very stressed if you listen to very soothing meditative calming music then like you know it sort of unwinds your mind and it can help you sleep better but the thing is that we need to have more and more scientific evidence on that because each individual is completely different eating each individual has got a different form of music that they absolutely like or they react to in a very emotional way so I feel that the scientific evidence becomes really important so that we can learn more and we can target the right kind of music to the right kind of person just like how everybody’s biochemistry of their body is completely different. Different medicines have got a different effect on them different foods have got a different effect on them It’s similar with music too so I guess that’s what is important but it is very obvious that music has a very therapeutic effect on people; we just have to quantify it.
Lastly, looking ahead, what is in store for you for the next year—any upcoming projects or collaborations that you would like to share with the fans?
So right now, of course, there are a lot of concerts I’m going to be performing all over India in the next one and a half months. I’m going to be performing in Sikkim, Jaipur, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Chennai—all of these places I’m going to be performing in, so I’m looking forward to those performances. I’ll also going to be doing my first ever concert in Saudi Arabia in the first week of December and also going to be performing in New York so I’m going to be doing a couple of international concerts, couple of concerts in India and when it comes to recording a new album or recording new music I’m going to not do that right now simply because I want to spend as much time promoting you know Break of Dawn because I’ve worked so hard on that album I want to ensure that it has its desired impact and it reaches out to as many people as possible creates enough you know mental wellness within people’s minds and then once I feel that it’s had its desired impact then I will go on and focus on working on a new project.
