Xenkat is bringing ancient sounds to the mainstream

Where new-age musicians are experimenting with cutting-edge technology, 34-year-old Siddharth Venkat plays instruments dating back over 1,000 years. His work centres around the didgeridoo from Australia, the asalato from West Africa, and the mouth harp, which likely originated in Asia before spreading to various civilisations.

The Bengaluru-based artiste, who goes by the stage name of Xenkat, aims to bring these instruments into the mainstream.

According to Xenkat, indigenous musical instruments offer a fun, intuitive playing experience, with rhythms that are therapeutic and that evoke a connection to the past. In live shows, he performs live looping with these instruments, blending genres like Karnatik, rock ‘n’ roll, and electronic music. “Some like to call it Psy Ritual,” he says of his genre. He has composed over 250 pieces, including solo works like ‘Muscaria’ and ‘Psilocybin’, and collaborations such as ‘Bahar’ and ‘Jog’ with Jugalbandi Electronica, an Indian classical experimental project.

Xenkat was once part of a rock band and later worked as a music journalist. He discovered his passion for indigenous instruments while working in off-the-grid communities in Kodaikanal and Bengaluru, which emphasised sustainability and holistic education.

Many of these instruments are designed to mimic the sounds of nature — wind, water, and birds. He was captivated not only by their organic and varied sounds but also by their history and cultural significance. He performed with them for eight years and even started educating urban audiences about them.

The didgeridoo is a long wooden wind instrument that creates a drone-like hum, while the mouth harp is a small metal instrument with a twangy sound. The asalato is a percussion instrument made of two dried gourds connected by string. It produces a clacking sound.

While indigenous instruments are gaining in popularity among indie musicians, the unavailability of materials remains a concern. “The asalato, for instance, is made from the oncoba spinosa, also known as the fried egg flower tree, which grows on islands off West Africa and in countries like Ghana, Senegal, and Ivory Coast,” he says. But Xenkat has found an alternative: he builds the asalato from the shells of the bilva fruit, also known as the wood apple.

To Xenkat, the asalato is like a “fidget spinner”. He has noticed how his corporate friends use it to de-stress, getting lost in its rhythmic patterns. To make it more accessible, he runs workshops where participants create their own asalato using common materials. In a school in Bengaluru where he once taught, students repurposed kumkum and moisturiser boxes and even dried passion fruit peels (stitched together) to make an asalato.

As a composer, he aims to expand his repertoire with unconventional instruments, such as the cosmicbow, a multi-stringed melodic mouthbow, and the handpan, a steelpan shaped like a UFO.