RICKY KEJ CREATING MUSIC THROUGH GLOBAL DIALOGUE

A three-time Grammy winner, 2025 Padma Shri recipient and UN Goodwill Ambassador, Kej is using his compositions and collaborations to inspire change and speak for the planet.

- BY SANJANA RAY PHOTOGRAPHS BY FARHAN HUSSAIN STYLING BY OJAS KOLVANKAR

Ricky Kej was in the sixth grade when he first heard Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. It was the age of the Walkman, and a school friend passed him a cassette titled Night Song, a collaborative studio album by the Pakistani qawwali legend and Canadian guitarist Michael Brook. Halfway through “Taa Deem”, a haunting fusion of soul-stirring vocals and the ambient music’s atmospheric restraint, he involuntarily broke down in tears. “I'm an atheist, I don’t believe in any kind of god or higher power... but I think in that moment, I experienced what many would call a spiritual moment,” he recalls at GQ Heroes, a Festival of Ideas set against the rolling greens of Nandi Hills.

Today, that same sixth-grader has become one of India’s most decorated contemporary composers—a three-time Grammy Award winner, 2025 Padma Shri recipient and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador known for fusing Indian classical influences with global sounds. The childhood itch to create transcendental music, the kind that would “overwhelm the senses” like he experienced when he was 11, materialised in 2015 with Winds of Samsara, his debut global fusion album, which won him his first Grammy. A collaboration with South African flautist Wouter Kellerman, the record layered Indian ragas with African rhythms, creating a lush, transcendental soundscape. Then came a partnership with The Police's Stewart Copeland for