Ricky Kej: An award like the Grammys is a platform for a stronger voice and for doing bigger, better things

At the 65th Annual Grammy Awards this month, musician, environmentalist Ricky Kej and musician-composer Stewart Copeland’s album Divine Tides won the Best Immersive Audio Album.
Ricky, at 41, won his third Grammy, the earlier awards were in 2015, 2022 in the Best New Age Album category. He remains the youngest desi to bag the Grammy and never takes all this for granted. Talking exclusively to this reporter, Ricky spoke about how much this really means to him.
“I believe that a lot of people say ‘I am not looking for awards’ and ‘Awards are not important’ but I believe that awards are really important. One can look at winning awards in two ways - one is in vanity that ‘I want an award’ and that I believe is the wrong way to look at it, the other way is that an award is basically a platform for having a stronger voice and for doing bigger and better things.”
Over the years, Ricky has selflessly worked for a lot of causes that he holds close to his heart. And he feels that international recognition and global awards always pave the way and makes it easier to work at all these causes in a much better way.
“I feel really strongly about the environment, climate change, refugees, children’s rights and that is the reason I work very closely with the United Nations organisations. I am a goodwill ambassador with the UN and I’ve worked with the refugees, worked closely with the UN CCD that is the United Nations Convention to Combat Diseases, land degradation issues, draught tissues and I also work closely with UNICEF for protecting children’s rights, so that is why I believe that awards like the Grammys are important. Especially since all of my music are about these topics, I do not do pop music, I do not do mainstream Bollywood. So, I believe that the Grammys give me a platform for a bigger and larger voice so that I can reach my message of awareness, message of action to as many people as possible.”