When a listener is applied to a component, that prevents the event
getting rippled up through its ancestors. Expecting events to ripple up
isn't a good idea. Adding event listeners may prevent any existing
listeners on ancestors from functioning (as it happens, I've just spent
the last couple of hours fixing such a bug in the Metal PL&F).

It so happens that for key events there is so special machinery.
JComponent input and action maps are what you want. JComponent has
better documentation under the obsolete (but easier to use and not
deprecated) registerKeyboardAction than getInputMap/getActionMap.
Essentially you want something along the lines of (off the top of my head):

   component.getInputMap(JComponent.WHEN_IN_FOCUSED_WINDOW).put(
       KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(
          'N', InputEvent.CTRL_DOWN_MASK
       ), "mycommand"
    );
   component.getActionMap(true).put(
       "mycommand", new AbstractAction() {
           public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
               ...
           }
       }
   );

or the obsolete way

   component.registerKeyboardAction(
       new ActionListener() {
           public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
               ...
           }
       },
       KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(
          'N', InputEvent.CTRL_DOWN_MASK
       ),
       JComponent.WHEN_IN_FOCUSED_WINDOW
    );

Tom Hawtin