Ricky Kej, an Indian music composer, won
his second Grammy Award early on Monday morning (IST) for Divine Tides, an album he produced in
collaboration with Stewart Copeland. They won the award in the Best New Age
Album category at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards in Las Vegas.

Also Read: Grammy Awards 2022: Indian origin Ricky Kej bags second golden gramophone

An elated Ricky, who won the Grammy in 2015
for the first time, took to Twitter to reveal the news.”Won the Grammy
Award today for our album Divine Tides. Filled with gratitude and love this
living-legend standing with me – @copelandmusic. My 2nd Grammy and Stewart’s
6th. Thank you to everyone who ever collaborated, hired, or listened to my
music. I exist because of you.”

Seven years back Kej won the prestigious
award in the Best New Age Album category for the album Winds of Samsara.

As he gets his second Grammy on Monday,
congratulations poured in for him from across the Indian music industry with
Benny Dayal and Shreya Ghoshal heaping praise on the 40-year-old.

Also Read: From Ricky Rej to AR Rahman: List of Indians who won Grammy Awards

The Divine Tides, the album for which Ricky
Kej and Stewart Copeland won the award, featured artists from around the world
and is a “tribute to the magnificence of the natural world and resilience of
our species”.

With this second accolade, Kej, a fan of
Marlon Brando and Eva Green, joined an exclusive group of Indian musical
maestros who won the Grammy more than once. Pandit Ravi Shankar (4),  Zubin Mehta (5), Zakir Hussain (3) and AR
Rahman (2) are the other Indians who won the award multiple times.

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Ricky Kej was born in North Carolina in
1981 to a Marwari father and a Punjabi mother. He has been living in Bengaluru
since he turned 8. He did his schooling in the Bishop Cotton School in
Bengaluru before finishing a degree in dentistry from the city’s Oxford Dental
College. He got married to his girlfriend Varsha in 2014.

Kej has a medical background. His father
and grandfather were doctors and he is the first generation musician in his
family. He convinced his father Dr Gyan Kej and mother Pammi Kej to pursue his dream in music.

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Mother Pammi Kej said that her son’s artistic
genes were inherited from his grandfather Janaki Das, an actor, Olympic
cyclist, and freedom fighter.

Ricky Kej started off as a keyboardist with
progressive rock band Angel Dust before he became a full-time composer. His
musical inspirations are Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Pandit Ravi Shankar and Peter
Gabriel. He was also nominated for an award at Cannes for his jingle on Nike in
2010. He has created music for over 3000 jingles.