The 58th Grammy Awards ceremony is being held on February 15, 2016 — with a live broadcast in India scheduled on the following day due to the time difference — at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. While nominations for the Grammy Awards ceremony were announced on December 7, 2015, what was notable was the large Indian presence in the list.
Anoushka Shankar, the sitarist daughter of the late, great Pandit Ravi Shankar is nominated in the Best World Music Album category for her album, Home, which was released on July 10 last year, and is an Indian classical album that showcases the meditative and virtuosic qualities of the Indian raga. Home features two ragas, one of which is a creation of Ravi Shankar. For Anoushka, this is her fifth nomination in this category.
Then there are the artistes who are of Indian origin, such as director Asif Kapadia, who directed a documentary on Amy Winehouse called Amy. His nomination appears for Best Music Film. Similarly, Jeff Bhasker features in the ‘Record Of The Year’ category for Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk, being co-writer and co-producer.
In the Best Instrumental Composition category, The Afro Latin Jazz Suite has garnered a nod to another person of Indian origin, Rudresh Mahanthappa, who competes with yet another Indian origin talent by the name of David Balkrishnan, nominated for Confetti Man.
While there is no doubt that several of these aforementioned musicians will emerge as victors during the 58th Grammy Awards, let us look at the Indian Grammy Award winners from the past:
1. Pandit Ravi Shankar Pandit Ravi Shankar was one of the best-known exponents of the sitar as well as a composer of Hindustani Classical music, having been honoured with four Grammy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Grammy (posthumous). My only opportunity of meeting him, albeit briefly, was when I presented him with a copy of Chants Of India, on behalf of record label EMI India, following a concert in New Delhi in 1998.
2. Zakir Hussain Zakir Hussain is not just a world-renowned tabla player. He is also a music producer, film actor, and composer! The tabla maestro was awarded the prestigious Grammy in 1992 for Planet Drum, on which he worked alongside Grateful Dead drummer, Mickey Hart. A reunion sparked by the 15th anniversary of the ground-breaking album resulted in ‘Global Drum Project’, which won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album at the 51st Grammy Awards Ceremony held in 2009.
3. T. H. Vinayakram [also known as Vikku Vinayak] Vikku Vinayak plays Carnatic music with the ghatam, an earthen pot, and is credited with popularising the instrument. He won a Grammy in 1991 for the Best World Music Album for his participation in Mickey Hart’s Planet Drum.
4. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt is a Hindustani classical music instrumentalist from Jaipur who plays the Mohan veena (a type of slide guitar). He won the Best World Music Album Grammy award in 1993 for A Meeting By The River in collaboration with guitarist Ry Cooder, a musician that I first heard on the original soundtrack recording of Cocktail, on which he played a rendition of the Elvis Presley popularised All Shook Up.
5. A.R. Rahman Rahman has been described by the TIME magazine as “the world’s most prominent and prolific film composer”. He has won two Grammy awards — one for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album (Slumdog Millionaire) and one for the Best Song Written For Visual Media (Jai Ho) — in 2010.
6. (Late) H. Sridhar H. Sridhar was a sound engineer and won a Grammy for his work, with A.R. Rahman, on Slumdog Millionaire. He also engineered and mixed albums for international artists like George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, Zakir Hussain, L. Shankar, and John McLaughlin, before he passed away in 2008.
7. P.A. Deepak P.A. Deepak is a Mix Engineer and Record Producer. He too won the Grammy for his work on Slumdog Millionaire.
8. Ricky Kej Ricky is a Bengaluru-based composer, music producer, and musician. He won a Grammy award in 2015 for his album Winds Of Samsara, a collaboration with South African flautist Wouter Kellerman.
9. Neela Vaswani Another Indian artist to make it big at the Grammy awards in 2015 was Neela Vaswani. She won the trophy in the Best Children’s Album category for her narration of the audio book of I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up For Education And Changed The World.
The writer has been part of the media and entertainment business for over 23 years. He still continues to pursue his hobby, and earns an income out of it.
