India At Grammys 2023: Anoushka Shankar, Berklee Indian Ensemble and Ricky Kej Nominated
From live albums to collaborations, we take a look at the Indian and Indian-origin artists nominated by the Recording Academy for music’s biggest night
(from left to right) Ricky Kej with Stewart Copeland, Anoushka Shankar and the Berklee Indian Ensemble. Photos: Courtesy of Lahari Music (Kej and Copeland), Laura Lewis (Shankar), TD Mosaic Festival (Berklee Indian Ensemble)
Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar and Adele are among the top nominees at the upcoming 2023 edition of The Grammy Awards, but as always, there are several other narratives jumping out of the nominations this time.
With a total of 91 awards being given out in different categories at The Grammys 2023 – to be held on February 5th – Indians have been maintaining a constant presence over the years. Composer and producer Ricky Kej won his first Grammy for his album Winds of Samsara in 2015 in the Best New Age Album category and he’s kept coming back for more. In 2022, Kej’s collaborative album with The Police drummer Stewart Copeland, Divine Tides, clinched another Grammy for Best New Age Album.
Now, Divine Tides has picked up a nomination for Best Immersive Audio Album at the Grammys 2023 – with credits going to “immersive mix engineer” Eric Schilling and “immersive producers” listed as Copeland, Kej and Herbert Waltl. Kej took to Instagram to talk about the nomination: “Overjoyed and humbled. I just got nominated for my third Grammy® Award! This time for ‘Best Immersive Audio Album’ for Divine Tides. Stewart Copeland and I are immensely grateful to the entire team of Divine Tides, especially immersive mix engineer Eric Schilling and mix producer Herbert Waltl. This feels absolutely surreal.”
London-born, Indo-American sitarist, vocalist and composer Anoushka Shankar has two nominations this year, both in the same broader category of Global Music. Pakistani-origin singer-composer Arooj Aftab’s song “Udhero Na” with Shankar is nominated for Best Global Music Performance, while the sitarist’s live album Between Us… (Live) with the Metropole Orkest, conductor Jules Buckley and hang player/percussionist Manu Delago has earned a nod for Best Global Music Album. Shankar posted a video talking about the news and said, “I just got two Grammy nominations! For Between Us, my album and my dear friend Arooj Aftab’s song ‘Udhero Na’. These are my eighth and ninth nominations. Thank you so much!”
Multicultural, genre-hopping group Berklee Indian Ensemble earned their first-ever Grammy nomination for Best Global Music Album, for their collab-heavy, star-studded 2022 album Shuruaat. In essence, this extends a nomination to fusion duo Shadow and Light (who collaborated on the track “Dua”) and the likes of Zakir Hussain, Shankar Mahadevan, Shreya Ghoshal and Vijay Prakash, among others.
