The 66th Grammy Awards, held on February 4, 2024, at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, were a memorial night for Indian music. The fusion band ‘Shakti‘, featuring vocalist Shankar Mahadevan, John McLaughlin, percussionist V Selvaganesh, Zakir Hussain, and violinist Ganesh Rajagopalan, bagged the ‘Best Global Music Album’ award for their latest album, ‘This Moment’.
Zakir Hussain has also won in two further categories in 2024, in Best Global Music Performance and Best Contemporary Instrumental Album, both along with Rakesh Chaurasia.
Apart from Shakti, Falguni Shah, the singer-songwriter popularly known as Falu, was nominated for the Best Global Music Performance for Abundance in Millets, a song that featured the voice of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The song was pat of her album Foras Road, which was inspired by her childhood in Mumbai. Falu is based in New York and blends classical Indian music with pop, rock, and jazz.
KnowALLedge Plus:
>The first Indian to win a Grammy was the legendary sitarist Pandit Ravi Shankar, who won the award for Best Chamber Music Performance in 1968 for his album West Meets East, a collaboration with violinist Yehudi Menuhin.
>The most nominated Indian musician is the renowned conductor Zubin Mehta, who has been nominated 18 times for various categories.
>The only Indian to win an Oscar and a Grammy is A.R. Rahman, who won two in 2010 for his work on the soundtrack of Slumdog Millionaire. He won the Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media and the Best Song Written for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media for the song Jai Ho.
> Zakir Hussain first won the Grammy in 2009 in the Contemporary World Music Album category for his collaborative album Global Drum Project with Mickey Hart, Sikiru Adepoju & Giovanni Hidalgo.
> Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, a slide guitar player, won the Best World Music Album in 1994 for his album A Meeting by the River with guitarist Ry Cooder. In recent years, Ricky Kej won the awards thrice, in 2015, 2022 and 2023.