City architect redesigns forgotten musical instruments

He got interested in instrument making and started a venture called Uru. “I did my architecture and during the fourth year, I met luthier Erisa Neogy. Based out of Auroville, he has been making stringed instruments for the past 30 years. I learned to make instruments professionally from him. After completing my architecture course, I decided to take up instrument making as my profession. That’s how the venture Uru was born — we focus on redesigning forgotten folk instruments of India,” says Tharun.

For the past many years, there are no major design changes in Indian musical instruments. But if you see in Western instruments, there will be a design change every decade. “A few years ago, I met Siva, a professor at Thyagaraja College, Madurai, who wanted to build a yazh. It is the first string instrument of Tamil music. We started research on how it was made. We had to make some design changes and used the latest technology that was available in the market. It took me eight months to create sengotti yazh,” he reveals.

Through Uru, the architect aims to modernise Indian instruments and make them sustainable for the coming years. “We are not only looking at existing Indian instruments but also vanished instruments that have the potential to be on global platform. We have developed 10 instruments so far and most of them were guitars. Next, I am planning to make panchamukha vadyam, a metal drum with five faces,” he sums up.