Alternative music, global healing: Indian-origin musicians strike a chord at the Grammys

For decades, the Grammy Awards have been considered the gold standard of excellence in music. It honours the achievement of popular artists across different genres — rock, pop, rap, metal, R&B and what have you — and also shines a light on alternative artists who are pushing musical boundaries in unexpected ways.

In the World Music and Global Music categories, for instance, we get to hear alternative sounds (sitars, djembes, cellos, flutes, etc.) from every corner of the globe; at the Grammys, they get the recognition they deserve. So, while the world watches for the biggest pop spectacle of the night, there’s a whole other celebration happening that proves music has no borders.

A year after Ustad Zakir Husain created history for being the only Indian to win four awards on a single night, four musicians of Indian origin were in competition in the same category at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards, which were announced on February 2. The category was Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album, and Chandrika Tandon, the elder sister of Indra Nooyi, was adjudged the winner. Her sixth studio album, ‘Triveni’ — a collaboration with Grammy-winning flautist Wouter Kellerman and master cellist Eru Matsumoto — weaves together ancient Sanskrit/Vedic mantras, classical instrumentation, and contemporary arrangements.

Chandrika Tandon's sixth studio album, ‘Triveni’ weaves together ancient Sanskrit/Vedic mantras, classical instrumentation, and contemporary arrangements.

Triveni, designed as a healing experience, creates an ethereal soundscape. Tracks like Pathway to Light and Seeking Shakti will seem to you like meditative journeys. Tandon’s vocals, steeped in devotion, glide over the strains of cello and flute, creating an effect akin to a sunrise over a still river — calm, powerful, and inevitable. The album, celebrated for its ability to induce a state of mindfulness, is as a sonic balm for those of us looking to calm ourselves through the conduit of music. Also nominated in the same category was Ricky Kej, a three-time Grammy winner, who was in the race (his fourth nomination) for his album Break of Dawn. If Triveni feels like a sunrise, then Break of Dawn is the wind rustling through the trees, the rain kissing parched earth, the song of an unseen bird at twilight.

Ricky Kej, a three-time Grammy winner, was in the Grammy's race (his fourth nomination) for his album Break of Dawn. 

Kej’s compositions are rooted in environmental consciousness, blending Indian classical motifs with sweeping orchestral arrangements. A long-time advocate for climate action, Kej, whose Grammy journey began in 2015 when he won his first Grammy for Winds of Samsara, infuses his music with an urgency that is both subtle and stirring. The album incorporates elements of indigenous chants, traditional Indian instruments like the bansuri and veena, and symphonic backdrops to create an acoustic panorama that feels both classical and futuristic. Collaborators on this album include the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, who lend a cinematic grandiosity to pieces like Whispers of the Earth and Horizon Awakes. Each of the nine compositions is rooted in a distinct raga, carefully chosen for its emotional and spiritual resonance, aimed at offering mental wellness to those seeking it.

Another contender in the same category was British-India Radhika Vekaria’s Warriors of Light. Overcoming a lifelong speech impediment, Vekaria found solace in music when words failed her. The album features Vekaria on vocals in Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil, and English, blending her diverse cultural influences into a cohesive, luminous work; the collaborating artists include flautist Shashank Acharya, hammered dulcimer artist Max ZT, sarod artist Pratik Shrivastava, tabla artist Alok Verma, among others.

Overcoming a lifelong speech impediment, Vekaria found solace in music when words failed her. 

Produced by George Landress, Warriors of Light layers traditional Indian mantras with contemporary ambient textures. Tracks (nine in total) like Asato Ma Sadgamaya, Libertae (Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra), Aganitha Tara (in Tamil), Release Your Fears are both reverential and modern. The use of atmospheric synths and reverb-drenched chants will make you feel as if you’re floating in an ancient temple suspended in time.

The fourth artist in the fray was Anoushka Shankar, daughter of Ravi Shankar, for Chapter II: How Dark It Is Before Dawn, an album that dives into personal experiences, channeling pain, loss, and healing through her sitar. It’s like a nocturnal sonata, recorded during sessions with British producer and composer Peter Raeburn in his two Soundtree Studios. It’s a meditation on night’s changing avatars — a time of healing but also haunted by the echoes of unspoken fears.

Anoushka Shankar's Chapter II: How Dark It Is Before Dawn dives into personal experiences, channeling pain, loss, and healing through her sitar. 

Raeburn, known for his evocative film scores, lends the record with an atmospheric vastness, contrasting the celestial minimalism of Chapter I with richer, more immersive textures. Shankar’s sitar glows like an ember through layers of droning resonance, its voice sometimes whispering, sometimes wailing, always searching.

In Pacifica, gentle synths and murmuring piano stretch toward an endless horizon, the sitar sketching twilight’s delicate filigree. “Offering” unspools its melody like a slow-burning mantra, reverb-drenched notes dissolving into the ether before coalescing into something sublime, as if awakening from meditation. In the End, a reimagining of Shankar’s 2017 composition for Shiraz: A Romance in India, carries the quiet ache of sleepless hours — a melancholy that settles in the bones. But where this sadness lingers is in Below the Surface, which stirs a deeper unease, its sitar buzzing like a distant swarm, the pulse of creeping anxiety.

Throughout, Shankar reshapes the sitar’s language, bending its microtones into unfamiliar hues. She takes its ancient drone — long a signpost of mysticism — and twists it into something spectral, something modern, something aching with unsung stories. On What Dreams Are Made Of, she lets it dance with found sounds and the echoes of desi-infused Americana. In Offering, it shimmers and the album reaches its crescendo in New Dawn. A slow, hypnotic unravelling gives way to a rising tide — piano arpeggios accelerating, layers of sitar stacking. With Chapter II, Shankar traces the passage from darkness to light, reimagining what the sitar can be, carving out new space for its voice in the modern world.

“When I titled it, I knew we needed a reminder that light would follow the seemingly-endless descent into darkness, and this album is about leaning into hope exactly when that feels the most pointless. I didn’t know then how despondent I would feel the week of it being recognized and the timing feels surreal. Please listen to it when you need to feel held and hugged by sound, please listen in the dark in your bed, please listen when you need a reminder of a new dawn,” she wrote on Instagram. Anoushka got another nomination this year for her collaboration with British multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier on A Rock Somewhere (also featuring Bengaluru-based vocalist Varijashree Venugopal) in the Best Global Music Performance category.

Anoushka is only taking the legacy of her father to new heights. In 1968, sitar maestro Ravi Shankar had become the first Indian artist to win a Grammy for West Meets East, a groundbreaking collaboration with violinist Yehudi Menuhin that won Best Chamber Music Performance. The previous year, he had been nominated for Sound of the Sitar (1965), an album that would later receive multiple reissues, claiming its place in classical music history.

Shankar’s Grammy journey continued with his work on The Concert for Bangladesh (1973), which won Album of the Year, and culminated in a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013, a posthumous recognition of his immense contributions to global music. It is his legacy that has paved the way for generations of Indian musicians, who mix classical music with experimental and world music elements from film scores to ambient music.

If Shankar was the pioneer, conductor Zubin Mehta became the most decorated Indian-origin musician in Grammy history with an astonishing 18 nominations over the years. From his orchestral interpretations of Strauss (Also Sprach Zarathustra, 1970) to his recordings of Verdi’s operas, Mehta’s body of work continues to receive critical acclaim, proving that classical and orchestral compositions remain an integral part of the alternative wave that have reshaped the Grammys in recent years.

The success of Indian artists at the Grammys not only highlight the global appreciation for alternative sounds but also underscore the power of music to transcend borders, heal, and inspire. While the spotlight remains on the big four awards (Beyoncé finally won the album of the year award, becoming the first Black woman to do so in history, for her country music album, Cowboy Carter), the victory of alternative musicians at the Grammys proves that good music has a life of its own, and it can always find its way to a powerful seat at the table.