EXCLUSIVE | Indian music composer Ricky Kej on his fourth Grammy nomination for his album 'Break Of Dawn': 'I would like to win the Grammy again simply because...'

Ram Gyan “Ricky” Kej is an Indian music composer and environmentalist and a three-time Grammy Award winner. Kej has been nominated a fourth time at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards for his album ‘Break of Dawn’.

In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, the man of the hour opened up on what his expectations this time are, leaving an impact with his music, and how to make a difference with his lyrics.

Edited excerpts from the interview

This is your fourth Grammy nomination for Break of Dawn. What exactly are you feeling?

The thought is always that with every successive Grammy, when you know the excitement comes down but that’s not true in this case at all, simply because I believe that over the uh over the years, with every successive album that I create, I believe that I grew as a musician and I collaborate with other musicians and learned from them, so I keep getting better and better. At least I feel that I keep getting better and better.

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And also, all of my music is about various social causes and environmental causes. So what happens is that I feel that even as a human being, I’m growing as I move along. This album is a culmination of all of that and it’s my best work to date. So to be recognized for this album, it obviously means a lot and it’s very exciting.

And how would you describe the song, Break of Dawn? What does this mean to you?

I’ve always been an environmentalist my whole life and the environment has always been forefront every single life decision that I’ve made my entire career, my music, everything is about the environment and it’s about various issues related to the environment and celebrating the environment. So there is this ancient Indian philosophy, which says that all the imbalances of the impurities of the environment is a direct reflection of the impurities of the mind. So in order for us to purify the environment, we first have to purify our mind. 
So then that we got me thinking a lot that with all the problems that we face on our planet, whether environmental or social problems, we’re always treating everything and solving everything very symptomatically.

We are treating everything on the surface. We’re not going to the root of the problem and the root of the problem is that we have to first fix our own minds, you know, and we have to purify our own minds. 
And that is how the journey of this album started. So I wanted to use Indian rooted wellness music to create a sense of wellness and to create a sense of mental wellness.

When you won your first Grammy, kindly share what the feeling was

Growing up in India, making music independent music, which is not part of the movie industry, was always an unattainable dream. One would not even think there is a possibility that one can win the Grammy and all of that stuff. That was not even a thought that we could have in our heads. And then what happened was that at the age of 33, I ended up winning my first Grammy. And that was, of course, a beautiful experience and I remember that the nominations were announced in 2014 in December and then two months later in February was the awards function. So the first time you get to know whether you won the awards is actually at the awards function when the celebrity opens the envelope and reads out the winner.

So during those two months, a lot of people would ask me, are you nervous about it. And my answer to them always was that I’m not nervous and I was not nervous simply because it hadn’t sunk in that the magnitude of this hadn’t sunk in. But when in February, the awards function happened and I actually sat down, in the hall, that is when I started getting nervous because then you understand the magnitude of this and you understand that this is actually real because you’re looking at all of these celebrities sitting down next to you, musicians who you admired your entire life, they’re just sitting down one or two seats away from you and then that is when the nervousness kicked in and it was very, very nerve-racking for me. But then luckily, my category was the first category to be announced. So I was very happy about that because whether I win or lose at least it’ll be over, you know? So the torture will be over.

You have now won three Grammy awards. Now you are nominated again. So are you still as nervous as you were?

The nervousness is not that much because I definitely feel that I would really like to win the Grammy simply because I believe that it will shed a light on on issues of mental wellness. It’ll remove the stigma from mental health. Because these are the things that are very important, to address the global burden of mental health and also remove stigma, because mental health should be looked upon as a mental health issues as any non-communicable disease, like diabetes or blood pressure and things like that, it should be looked upon like that, or even having a fracture. R

Right now what happens is that people are very ashamed to say that that they’ve got mental health issue or they’re feeling a lot of stress or they are in depression or they’re feeling a lot of anxiety because the problem is that society has always taught everybody that if you feel this way, then get over it or, you know what’s wrong with you, all you’re a crazy person or whatever, but that’s not true because I think it should be treated like any other disease.

So I believe that that this album will also help in that way to remove the stigma from admitting to the issues. I worked very, very hard on my album. I feel that it’s my best work ever. So I would I would definitely like to win more.