Ricky Kej’s first solo album is on its glorious way… with a serenity-inspired prescription for mental wellness. There is most predictably, another Grammy Award awaiting his soulful grasp in those gentle flowing mellifluous notes. The Indian maestro’s fourth nomination for the Grammy Awards, for his latest album Break of Dawn, with spurts of collabs across the Indian musical universe resonates in its calming and soothing identity to inculcate wellness through music. What’s even more credible is that the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador’s exploration of healing through music might become a remedy doctors can prescribe to heal lost souls.
The album, a medley of mindfulness has married the ancient world of Indian raagas (nine raagas) with nine songs composed and rendered with peace emanating. A dance that aims to make music relevant to ease the anxiety, stress and turmoil-addled lives of 2024 – these songs of inner peace saw Ricky Kej join bring India-rooted wellness to support wellness worldwide with Stanford Global Health, USA. Ricky has committed to support the work of Stanford Biodesign and Stanford Global Health in his album released by Vedam Records, a brand new wellness music label set up by Universal Music Group, India, along with Kej.
Purifying the mind with raagas
The foray into what is inherently ailing the world today, addressing the world mental health crises for this environmentalist and world thinker has always been at the forefront of his actions. “There is this ancient Hindu-Buddhist philosophy that says that the impurities of the environment and ecology are a direct reflection of the impurities of the mind. In order to purify the environment, one has to first purify the mind,” shares the three time Grammy winner who has seamlessly brought his rich musical oeuvre to mean something more than just music – solace.
“Over the past few years what ever we as humans are doing to protect the environment, nature, becoming a more compassionate society with more empathy, we are just symptomatically curing issues. The only way to get to the root of our issues is mental wellness, to create a more compassionate, kind and environmentally conscious society – that was the genesis of Break of Dawn. I decided that the way that I was going to do this was by using Indian routed wellness music,” explains Kej who chose nine different raagas for nine songs composing music based on those ancient raagas, “everything from the choice of instruments to composition style, layering, orchestra, vocals – has meticulously evolved to bring about a sense of calm, to declutter the mind.”
Working with Stanford Global Health
As a proponent of peace, saving the planet, Kej even has a chapter on him taught to students. Now, Kej is committed to Stanford Global Heath’s objectives. Since music’s universality can play a role in soothing and calming the minds, and is therapeutic, he adds, “We need to quantify this, have scientific backing and data. Thus, I have been interacting with institutes across the world with a major one being Global Health at Stanford Biodesign. I am grateful that Stanford gave me a beautiful citation, and for addressing the global burden of mental health through Indian-rooted wellness music. That is a huge high – acknowledging the role of music and art in alleviating mental health issues. I will be collaborating with them further, other institutes too, to collect as much data as possible so we can go through the regulatory mechanisms such that doctors can start prescribing this music to patients.”
For Kej, the end goal is to showcase that music does not have to be entertainment only, but it can heal issues we face has humankind.
Chants to heal
Break of Dawn brought musicians from across India even as Kej laboured on to find magic in the soulful depths of these raagas in his first solo album. “I worked with musicians from India, collaborated with Ravi Chander Lulla, Varijashree Venugopal, Japanese Canadian flute player and Grammy-nominated Ron Korb, singer Shradha Ganesh from Canada, Siddhartha Bellmannu from Bangalore, Manoj George on Indian violin – they have all come together to bring my compositions to life,” he adds.
Indianness is steeped in Kej’s psyche, and often finds natural resonance in his music. Viewing the raagas from the lens of mental health and wellness is his message to the world.
“I myself commissioned myself to be in this album – every single album has a piece of me. I am learning more and more, and understanding different perspectives, and that is what I bring into my music. Break of Dawn is the culmination of all my life’s experiences I feel grateful to be nominated, I really hope I can bring the award back home to India as it’s the first ever solo-artist Grammy nomination for an Indian since the great Pandit Ravi Shankar.”