It was chest pumping moment for India when two Indian musicians won big at the recently concluded 64th Grammy Awards 2022. Joy and pride waves started blowing across India after it was announced that Bengaluru based musician Ricky Kej and Indian-American Falguni Shah have won the 64th Grammy Awards. Bengaluru boy Ricky Kej won his second Grammy Award for Divine Tides, an album he collaborated on with Stewart Copeland, founder and drummer of the iconic rock band The Police. They won in the Best New Age Album category at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards. On the other hand, Falguni Shah aka Falu, won the Best Children’s album for A Colourful World (El Cerrito Records). The album stemmed from her struggles to explain racial equity to her child, who is brown and studies with kids from varying ethnicities.
Notably, it was second Grammy Award for Ricky Kej. Earilier, Ricky Kej won the Grammy Award at the 57th Grammy ceremony in 2015 for Winds of Samsara – a collaboration with South African flautist Wouter Kellerman. As soon as it was announced that Ricky Kejhas won his second Grammy , PM Modi lauded the musician for his remarkable feat.
Ricky Kej interesting facts
Those who are eager to know about who is Ricky Kej or Ricky Kej interesting facts can read further:
Ricky won his first Grammy in 2015 for his album 'Winds of Samsara' in the Best New Age Album category. Therefore, after winning the Grammy 2022, Ricky Kej has joined a rare group which includes Ravi Shankar, Zubin Mehta, Zakir Hussain, AR Rahman and other Indian winners.
Ricky Kej was not born in India. He was born in North Carolina in 1981. However, the half-Punjabi, half-Marwari boy has lived in Bengaluru since he was 8. The Grammy 2022 winner studied in Bishop Cotton School in Bengaluru before finishing a degree in dentistry from Oxford Dental College, also in the city. He got married to his girlfriend Varsha in 2014.
Coming back to Ricky Kej family, most members of his family were in the medical profession. His father and grandfather were doctors, and he struck the middle-class deal with his parents to let him try his hand at music after finishing his degree. His mother Pammi believed that his artistic genes were inherited from his grandfather Janaki Das – an actor, Olympic cyclist and freedom fighter.
Ricky started his music career as a keyboardist with progressive rock band Angel Dust before he became a full-time composer. Furthermore, his major musical inspirations are Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pandit Ravi Shankar and Peter Gabriel.
In 2010, he was nominated for an award at Cannes for his jingle on Nike. He has created music for over 3000 jingles and even Kannada films. He has won more than 100 music awards in over 20 countries.
After winning the Greammy 2022, Ricky Tej explained the meaning of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and revealed how he drawn the reference from it for his Grammy winning album. Talking about the same, he said, "In India, we have a saying as "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam" which means that the world is one family. And when we think that the world is one family, the only thing that comes to our mind is living in peace within the human species. But we have to go further in that and we have to live with peace with all the entities that live on this planet, whether it is the wildlife, the forest, the elements of nature which as the water we drink, the air we breathe, the land we walk on and Divine Tides is all about co-existence."