JGM Pick of the Week – September 22, 2025

“Abide With Me”
Ricky Kej feat. Ricky Dillard
From the 2025 CD Gandhi: Mantras of Compassion

By Robert M. Marovich

Two Rickys—Kej and Dillard—combine their creative talents to convert the hymn “Abide With Me” to twenty-first-century world music.

This magisterial mashup of Indian music and the Black church choir brings out new flavors from Henry F. Lyte’s mid-nineteenth-century hymn. The song’s a cappella conclusion, which doubles as the album’s ending, takes the listener back to a vocal blend that predates all genres.

For those unfamiliar with his work, Ricky Kej is a three-time Grammy awardee with two dozen albums to his credit. His musical palette, though thoroughly rooted in his Indian heritage, embraces every acre of the world. Ricky Dillard is the Dove Award-winning choir director of the New Generation Chorale (New G) whose gospel music career gained international traction with the 1991 release The Promise and its smash hit, “More Abundantly.”