Ricky Kej is a three-times Grammy Award-winning, three-times Grammy nominated Indian music composer and environmentalist. He has performed at venues in over 30 countries including at the United Nations headquarters in New York and Geneva. In December 2022, Kej was announced as a UNHCR “Goodwill Ambassador”.
Kej was also named a UNCCD Land Ambassador at the COP14 to raise public awareness about the challenges of land degradation, desertification and drought. Kej also serves as a UNESCO – MGIEP “Global Ambassador for Kindness”, UNICEF Celebrity Supporter, and is an ambassador for the Earth Day Network. In 2020, Kej was named as a GQ Hero 2020 by GQ magazine.
In 2022, Ricky Kej won a Grammy at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards for his album “Divine Tides” in collaboration with Rock & Roll legend Stewart Copeland in the Best New Age Album category. This album was critically acclaimed by numerous news agencies such as Rolling Stone, Bloomberg, The Sunday Guardian, India Today among others.
“Divine Tides” won a second Grammy award at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards in the Best Immersive Audio Album category, which took place in Los Angeles on 6th February 2023.
In 2015, he won a Grammy at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards for his album “Winds of Samsara” in the Best New Age Album category. The project, his 14th studio album, debuted at No. 1 on the US Billboard New Age Albums Chart in August 2014, a first for a person of Indian origin. The album also peaked at No. 1 on the Zone Music Reporter Top 100 Radio Airplay Chart in the month of July 2014. Kej also performed keyboards on the 2016 Grammy-winning album Grace, produced and composed a song on the 2016 Grammy-nominated album Love Language and arranged and performed keyboards on the 2015 Grammy-nominated album Ayahuasca Dreams. His album Shanti Samsara – World Music for Environmental Consciousness was launched on 30 November 2015 at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then French president, Francois Hollande. In the months since its launch, Kej has traveled widely speaking about conservation and the environment, including a visit to the Republic of Kiribati, where he interviewed and created music with three-term ex-president, Anote Tong. Kej is credited with over 3,500 placements for radio and television jingles. He composed the music for the 2011 Cricket World Cup opening ceremony, held at Dhaka on 17 February 2011. On 26 April 2016, Kej travelled to Jaipur, India where he was named as goodwill ambassador for Save the Children’s new global campaign, Every Last Child. On 18 July 2016, he was awarded the Excellence and Leadership award as a global humanitarian artist at the United Nations Headquarters, New York and performed excerpts from Shanti Samsara live in the United Nations General Assembly Hall. Kej concluded his performance at the United Nations General Assembly by saying, “To end, I want to state the obvious … Climate change is real … Climate change is human induced. Climate change is affecting us all … and our actions affect countries on the other side of the world.”
In 2018, Kej was named in the “Real Leaders 100 List”. Real Leaders (a signatory to the United Nations) curates this list of leaders who ‘Inspire the Future’. He was the only representative from India. In May 2018, Kej was honoured by the House of Commons of Canada for “Outstanding Musical and Humanitarian Achievement”. In his endeavour to familiarise children with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), he created My Earth Songs – 27 children’s rhymes based on the 17 SDGs. These songs launched by UNICEF are published in over five million textbooks (English, Hindi and Kannada languages).
In 2020, Kej was featured in GQ Heroes for using his talent to better our planet through his music, advocacy, lifestyle and action. His life and journey as a musician are now taught to 7th-grade children in India as part of the ICSE syllabus English textbooks. Kej is notably also a professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (at the Indian Institute of Science).
