Fusion band Shakti, which includes Zakir along with Shankar Mahadevan, Selvaganesh Vinayakram and Ganesh Rajagopalan won the Grammy for Best Global Music Album, This Moment. Indian music composer and three-time Grammy-award winner Ricky Kej hailed it as 'India's year at the Grammys' and we get up close with him to get his reactions on India's wins at the Grammys.
What are your reactions to this year's Grammy Awards?
It was a very big night for India for sure. We've had five Grammy Award winners from India. Two albums - one was Béla Fleck's album titled As We Speak. That particular album had two Grammy-Award winners from India, Ustad Zakir Hussain and Rakesh Chaurasia as the album won Grammy Awards for two different categories. Then we had John McLaughlin's Shakti album titled This Moment. It had four Grammy-Award winners including Zakir Hussain, Shankar Mahadevan, Selvaganesh Vinayakram and Ganesh Rajagopalan. Zakir Hussain created history by becoming the first Indian to win three Grammy Awards in one night. The past record was held by AR Rahman, who won two Grammys for Slumdog Millionaire. All of them are very deserving of international recognition.
What is your message to the Indian winners?
I won three Grammy Awards in the past and I've always hoped for a night like this, where Indian music takes centre stage. Indian music won in three different categories and that is quite amazing. One could not ask for a better result at the Grammys. In the past, whenever anybody would talk about an Indian getting international recognition, it was always about, 'I have to sing in English or I have to sing hip-hop music'. It was always that we had to do something that the West was doing. But if you look at my Grammy wins and the five musicians who won it today, every single one of us has been doing Indian music. We've stuck to our roots and created music based on our traditions and culture. We've gotten global recognition for what we're doing. That is something that I think younger musicians need to understand. You need to stay true to yourself and dig deep within your roots, figure out what makes you uniquely Indian and create art in any form based on who you are as an Indian and you will get recognition from all over the world.
You hailed it as 'India's year at the Grammys'. What does the future look like for India now?
It's only upwards from here. This is going to encourage a whole lot of younger musicians to dream big and to think big. Right now what's happening is that it's always said that Western music is a paradigm. Other cultural forms of music like Indie music, African music, Chinese music or Korean music are considered to be exotic or considered to be ethnic. When we talk about classical music, everybody first thinks about Western classical music and then they think about any other form of classical music. Indian music should be considered mainstream and I think this is a move in that direction.
Were there any surprise winners for you at this year's Grammy Awards?
Almost all the winners were pretty much expected. I very much expected Shakti and Béla Fleck to win. When it came to other mainstream categories, I was pretty sure that the Album of the Year was going to Taylor Swift because she had an incredible year. I was also pretty sure that the Song of the Year was going to go to Billie Eilish for her song for the Barbie movie. This year was pretty much a good year for music because everybody who we expected actually won.
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