BENGALURU: Ricky Kej has always kept environmental issues at the centre of his work and his latest music is no different. The Grammy-award winning musician has put out an uplifting song called Jaago, which also features performers Benny Dayal and Andrea Jeremiah, as part of his ‘Lockdown Sessions’. Performed and created with limited resources and logistics, these are performance videos of various online concerts in 2020, during the worldwide lockdowns.
“Jaago looks at the whole world as one song, with all of us within that unit. I’ve always believed that music will help us live together in harmony, which is the need of the hour,” he says, giving the analogy of an orchestra where different instruments blend in harmoniously.
“Take, for instance, a tuba, which is unusually loud, while a flute is soft or the timpani, which is similar to the drums. But each of these instruments has their own personality and yet blend together as one,” says Kej, who spent 2020 doing virtual concerts for the World Health Organization, UNICEF and United Nations Climate Change.
Over the next few weeks, Kej will be putting out 12 such videos, with this being the second in line. The first was a song, Jai Kisaan, performed with Anushka Manchanda, which is dedicated particularly to the tribal farmers and inspired by the Zero Budget Natural Farming Movement.
“Right now, there’s a sense of virtual fatigue, so people are looking for well-produced content,” says Kej. Which is why he is also working on a series of 75 videos with a bunch of filmmakers, which includes a series on discovering Tamil Nadu that highlights the many temples of the state. In April, he will be releasing an album, where the theme, not surprisingly, is nature.