Chennai’s Urupaanar revives extinct instruments

The music of the eight- member band is rooted in ancient Tamil text, writes Rashmi Rajagopal

At a recent event in Bengaluru, the audience was treated to something unusual. To a city used to conventional Western and classical Indian music instruments, Chennai-based band Urupaanar was a bit of a novelty. The eight-member group, formed in 2023, began their set with a song titled ‘Vandhene’, an homage to the sun. The music is a blend of tunes from instruments like the yazh, kudamuzha, parai, urumi and salangai, all ancient Tamil instruments, which they hope to revive through their work. 

When founder, Tharun Sekar, began reviving instruments that were extinct, he started with the yazh — a peacock-shaped harp mentioned widely in ancient Tamil texts from the Sangam era. He then moved on to the kudamuzha — a five-faced drum, originally made from brass. “Brass makes it very heavy to transport, so I experimented with bronze, which is lighter,” Sekar says. As these instruments were extinct, Sekar constructed them after researching works of old Tamil literature. 

The group describes its music as ‘revival or world music’. “It takes cues from pann isai — an old Tamil musical system,” says Sivasubramnian, vocalist, lyricist and yazh player. Other members include Pravekha Ravichandran, Goutham Vasu Venkatesan, Keerthi Rathan, Vishwa Bharath, Vikram and Elango. They refer to their set as an ‘act’. Their current act is titled ‘Thol’ and is built around ‘Tholkaapiyam’, the oldest work of Tamil literature. The text divides landscape (thinai) into five categories and each is associated with a specific time (pozhudhu — which is further divided into sirimpozhudhu or parts of the day and perumpozhudu or seasons of the year), and emotion (nimitham). The songs therefore are composed keeping these categories in mind. ‘Vandhene’, for instance, is a celebration of dawn (vaigarai/kaalai) and agrarian land on the riverside (marudham).

In ‘Kattukkulla’, a haunting number featuring instruments like yazh, thudumbu, didgeridoo, and urumi, the focus is on a man lost in drought-stricken wilderness (paalai) on a hot afternoon (nanpagal). He is longing for his beloved.

The act comprises a total of seven songs, beginning at dawn and ending at midnight, covering landscapes like pastoral, coastal, and mountainous. Apart from ‘Thol’, the group also performs individual songs at weddings and other events. “But the songs are almost always inspired by Tamil literature,” Sivasubramaniam clarifies. 

‘Kannamma’, one of their popular numbers that don’t feature in the act, is inspired by the works of Subramania Bharatiyar, ‘the father of modern Tamil literature’. In his writings, he used the name Kannamma to refer to his wife.

The band has had a successful run in a short time, and is expecting many artiste collaborations and film projects this year.