Kailash Satyarthi and Ricky Kej in discussion. Photo: Courtesy of the artist
It’s safe to say that if Ricky Kej has a favorite ideologue, it’s Mahatma Gandhi. The Bengaluru composer and producer’s 2014 Grammy-winning album Winds of Samsara with flautist Wouter Kellerman opens with a stirring track called “Mahatma.” Even his 2021 album with the Police’s Stewart Copeland, Divine Tides, has a euphoric track called “Gandhi.”
Now, there’s an entire album dedicated to Gandhi – Mantras of Compassion, which Kej released independently this week, featuring cellist and multi-instrumentalist Tina Guo, Japanese artist Masa Takumi, Copeland once again, and spoken word by activist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Kailash Satyarthi. “Gandhi has remained constant, the use of the word compassion has also remained constant,” Kej tells Rolling Stone India.
So how did a Grammy winner and a renowned activist team up for an album? Kej says the partnership with Satyarthi grew out of a joint four-city tour they embarked on last year, where there were speeches as well as performances as part of a fundraiser for the Satyarthi Movement for Global Compassion, an initiative “that champions compassion as a driving force for justice, equality, peace, and sustainability.”
Kej says that throughout the tour, they had discussions about how Satyarthi’s activism and life’s guiding principles were based on Gandhi. “We had discussions as to what an album with music dedicated to Gandhi would sound like and what would be the messages in it,” Kej says. They eventually picked five hymns that Gandhi liked during his lifetime and that led to the tracks like “We Are One (Raghupati Raghava),” “Empathy (Vaishnava Janato),” “Devotion (Payoji),” and “Abide With Me.” Satyarthi’s English spoken word tracks extol the legacy, beliefs and life of Gandhi, and how his learnings will continue to guide the world, including the activist himself.
Among the long list of collaborators on the album, Kej has a story about how Takumi came to join the project. Takumi, who has performed with the likes of the late Sly Stone and pop favorites in Japan, was requested by Kej to play the traditional stringed Japanese instrument shamisen. “I actually lied to Masa about a year and a half back when we were starting to make the album, and I told him that there is this huge concert that I’m doing in India, but that he needed to play a traditional instrument like the shamisen. He’s like, ‘Yeah, definitely, Ricky-san, I’ll do it for sure.’” Turns out, the same day, Takumi went out and bought a shamisen and began his training. “In a week’s time, we get on a call, and he’s playing the shamisen like a proper pro. And then I told him there is no concert that’s happening, but there is an album that is happening, and I want him to play shamisen on that particular album. He said yes,” Kej says.
In addition to Copeland appearing on “Be The Change,” Gandhi – Mantras of Compassion also includes a powerhouse vocal performance by singer-songwriter Philip Lawrence (known for his work with pop artist Bruno Mars) on “Samsara.” Kej reveals that Lawrence’s parts were first recorded with another song and a “completely different” arrangement and project. While working with Sanskrit shlokas from the Upanishads on this album (specifically a translation of the shloka “Isha vasyam idam” about oneness in the universe and divinity), Kej remembered the portion that Lawrence had recorded and figured it would “work really well.”
The album also features late American singer-songwriter Peter Yarrow, while Indian artists on the album include vocalists like Devan Ekambaram, Siddhartha Belmannu, Shivaraj Natraj (from prog-fusion act Project Mishram), sitarist Purbayan Chatterjee, and several more. With the album now out, Kej and his team are trying to send Gandhi – Mantras of Compassion over to different audiences, looking beyond usual digital marketing. Kej says, “We have a database of prisons all over the world, we’re sending it to these prisons to play at their facility. Second thing is that as many schools that have got the facility of playing back music, we’re going to be sending it out to all of them so that they can play it for free in the school. We’re trying to figure out how to get this out as far and wide as possible, and not through the traditional ways of streaming and, you know, YouTube views and all of that stuff.”
The goal with this independently-released album has always been “as non-commercial as possible” out of “respect for Gandhi and the message we’re trying to convey,” the composer says. What does it take then for an independent album to be submitted and campaigned for at the Grammys, where Kej has now won thrice? He says he’d first like to see “whether people like the album or not” and then decide on sending it in to the Recording Academy for a possible nomination. “I believe that the awards are not an end goal. The awards are a platform for spreading the message and spreading the music further and wider,” he adds.
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