Q1. Can you tell us what Uru Paanar is doing to be recognised as a carrier of the wandering minstrels of Tamil tradition?
Tharun: We are Urupaanar — an experience-driven ensemble that weaves stories through ancient Tamil instruments. The word “Paanar” itself carries the soul of those wandering musicians from the mountains, from Kurinji, from the Western Ghats of ancient Tamilakam — and that’s exactly why we named ourselves after them.
We’re artists from different cities, different suburbs, entirely different musical traditions — all practicing music in Chennai, all drawn to the same pull: the Uru collective. What brings us together is curiosity. And a deep yearning to build something bigger — a community, a sound, a living thing made from instruments the world nearly forgot.
SiSu: Our anchor is the Tinai framework — the landscape classification from Tolkappiyam, one of the oldest works on Tamil grammar. Sangam poetry ties space and time together through it. Agam poetry assigns emotion to each landscape. So we’re not just playing music — we’re telling stories through it. Instrument and sound revival is the core. Sangam-inspired songwriting follows the sound. Through these two, we try to re-imagine what Tamil antiquity sounded like — not as a museum piece, but as something alive. A continuum. Just like the language itself.
Will we ever fully become what the Paanars were to ancient Tamilakam? We don’t know. But that’s the dream. The shared vision. You’ll see it in our music, the stories we carry, the way we dress everything we bring to the stage. We’re just trying to keep walking — like they did.
Q2. Do you, as a band, think of yourselves as sound archaeologists?
Tharun: That’s a beautiful framing, but archaeology is fundamentally a science-driven process — you work from evidence, from artifacts, from documentation. With sound, we don’t have that luxury. There are no aural recordings from 2,000 years ago. No direct sonic evidence. What we have are literary references — poetry, grammar, descriptions of instruments being played in specific landscapes at specific times of day.
What we’re really doing is translating written emotion into sound. It becomes an emotion-driven process more than an evidence-driven one. We’re not excavating what something sounded like — we’re feeling our way toward what it could have felt like. That’s a very different thing from archaeology. It’s closer to dreaming with intent, if that makes sense.
Q3. You have taken inspiration from Sangam literature and Tolkappiyam. Can you tell us the process of deciding on these methods of expression?
SiSu: We are a strange mix — innovative instrumentalists, curious designers, notorious poets, and sound historians all in one room. We can’t just jam and arrive at a song. What usually happens is that we crack an interesting sound during a session, and then we sit with it — does this sound invoke a certain emotion in all of us? Not just one person, but everyone in the room? And then we start talking about the landscape and time that sound belongs to.
Because our work is emotion-driven and experience-driven, we needed a strong structural spine to work from — something that gave us both freedom and discipline. Tolkappiyam gave us that. It’s grammar, yes, but it’s also a framework — a very definite, structural guide for understanding time, space, and emotion. For us, it became the map on which we could lay our sounds without getting lost.
Q4. The band comprises guitarists, percussionists, architects, composers, and flautists. How did you find each other?
Tharun: It’s quite a story, actually. Pravekha and I were already playing together as a band called Othasevuru, so he came along naturally. SiSu and I first met in Madurai when he was working on the Keeladi documentation — the archaeological excavation near Madurai. I was just finishing college and working on an idea for an instrument-making workshop. That’s when SiSu asked me to make a Yazh — not as a relic, but as something that could be played in today’s context. That idea became the seed of everything. Goutham Vasu and Keerthirathan joined through other collaborations over time.
Then there’s Vishwa — I actually met him on the Chennai Metro during a gig organised by the Chennai Corporation. He plays traditional percussion like Parai, Thavil, Urumi, and also teaches kids and college students. Elaiya Bass is a veteran — nearly 20 years on Chennai’s live music scene, countless orchestras and stages. We found him through a mutual friend, and the moment we met and started jamming, it just clicked. And Vikram, our flautist — we’d been looking for someone who could play not just flute but rooted wind instruments like Kombu and Kokkarai. Vikram started cautiously, exploring, and over time he’s mastered Peppa, Didgeridoo, Kombu, Kokkarai — all of it. There’s a connecting thread running through all of us — in life and in music. You feel it when we perform. The energy is unmistakable.
Q5. Researching, documenting, and exhibiting historical sounds requires great effort. How do you go about giving them artistic expression?
SiSu: Each of us connects to the band through something very core — a specific lens we bring. For me, it’s storytelling as an art form. For Tharun, it’s history, research, and instrument-making. Pravekha brings theatre, performance, and entertainment. Goutham Vasu holds the arrangement and musicality — the sonic architecture of what we create. These four perspectives form the spine of the band. The rest of the artists layer in sonic detail, raw energy, and discipline. When all of that comes together in a room, something happens that none of us could have created alone. That’s where the artistic expression lives — in the collision of all these different ways of seeing and hearing.
Q6. As a band, you are one of the few who consider instrument-building as part of your routine. Please throw light on this.
Tharun: Urupaanar functions like an incubation lab — we explore instruments made by Uru Instruments alongside others we’ve collected from our travels across different places. Uru Instruments started with a very clear idea — to modernise Indian and regional instruments so they can hold their own on a global stage today. There are so many nuanced sounds from South and East Asian sonic traditions that have simply been left behind — not because they aren’t beautiful, but because no one updated them for contemporary contexts.
The process is slow and painstaking. Every instrument goes through prototyping, testing, failure, rebuilding. The Yazh alone took years of iteration. But what drives it is accessibility — if people can’t play these instruments, can’t afford them, can’t find them, they die. Making them available, playable, and relevant is the only way to keep that sonic history alive. It’s a continuous process — we’re never really done.
Q7. Your stage act is more about storytelling around the instrument. What is the construct of your stage show?
SiSu: Our show is structured around the five Tinai landscapes from Tolkappiyam — Kurinji, Mullai, Marutham, Neithal, and Paalai. Each landscape carries its own emotion, its own time of day, its own instruments. The context of the show always revolves around that framework. Every performance is a sonic adventure — an attempt to make the audience feel what it might have been like to exist in ancient Tamilakam, not through explanation, but through direct experience.
Q8. Tell us about the effort you have put into modernising the Yazh, and the other instruments you are bringing to the mainstream.
Tharun: I’m a guitarist, and I started making guitars when I was young — primarily because some instruments weren’t available locally, so I taught myself through YouTube videos. But after an internship with a luthier in Auroville, I began to truly understand the nuances of materiality and precision. That foundation changed everything.
The Yazh was the beginning of something much larger — for me and for Uru Instruments. When SiSu first asked me to make one, I had to start almost from scratch. There were no living makers, no direct lineage to learn from. Just literary descriptions and a few sculptural references. I had to reverse-engineer an instrument from poetry.
What I realised very quickly was that if I simply replicated what I imagined the ancient Yazh to be, it would be a museum object. Beautiful, but dead. So the work became about understanding the acoustic principles — the resonance, the string tension, the body shape — and then asking: how do we make this instrument speak today? How do we make it loud enough for a stage, responsive enough for a modern musician, and still true to its soul?
Close to eight different types and variations of the Yazh have been designed and refined by Uru Instruments through this process. And the same philosophy applies to everything else we work on — Kudamuzha, Peppa, Kombu, Kokkarai. Each one is a conversation between what was and what could be. It’s the most humbling and the most exciting work I’ve ever done.
Q9. The fact that your repertoire keeps you away from film or Carnatic music is fascinating. How did this revolution take place?
SiSu: Honestly, it was never a conscious decision to stay away from those worlds. It just came down to what kind of experience we were building. In film music, you’re always in service of the visual medium — the image leads, the sound follows. In Carnatic music, the grammar of composition and recital is deeply refined over centuries, and the finesse demanded in that classical setup is an entirely different pursuit.
What we’re doing is fundamentally an aural experience — but it goes beyond just hearing. It’s visual, it’s tactile, it invokes senses that aren’t usually part of an entertainment experience. When you sit in one of our shows, we want you to feel the landscape that the music is describing. That intention naturally takes you somewhere else.
Q10. Have you been restricted by the thought that you would be considered a Heritage revival band rather than a modern act?
Tharun: Not at all, because we’re genuinely not a revival band. Most of our work isn’t about recreating the music of the past — it’s about contemporary soundscape experimentation using acoustic methods, drawing from the emotional experiences of our own lifetimes. We are a thoroughly modern bunch who happen to be deeply inspired by what came before us.
Drawing from the past to move forward — that’s our zone. We’re inspired by antiquity, but we’re not stuck in it. There’s a big difference between honouring something and being imprisoned by it.
Q11. On a regular day, what is your routine practice schedule?
SiSu: We have regular hangouts and jam sessions, and we’ve had continuous shows across the country over the last three years. Before every show there are rehearsals, of course. But even in the off-season, when there are no gigs on the horizon, we gather — even if it’s just to play cricket together or catch a film. The band has become a way of life, not just a schedule.
Q12. Tell us about your debut album, Thol, and the thinking behind combining it with a one-hour film.
SiSu: We made music videos for seven songs, and with the introductions and context built around each one, it became a one-hour compilation — shot like a performance documentary to capture not just the music but the instruments themselves, how they’re held, how they’re played. We felt that what may have been missing from history all along is exactly that: a visual, aural, and tactile documentation of these instruments in motion.
So we took the film on a tour — Chennai, Bengaluru, Coimbatore — and people came and watched it in a cinema-style setting. It almost mimics a live performance, but without the logistics of one. The response was extraordinary. People who had never heard of these instruments were moved by them. It gave us enormous feedback and the confidence to keep experimenting with formats like this. It showed us that people are genuinely hungry for this kind of experience.
Q13. You’ve mentioned your performance at the renovated Sabha school in Bengaluru. Please describe the experience.
Tharun: Sabha is one of those rare performance spaces that feels curated right down to its bones. The architectural conservation — an adaptive reuse project — was designed by Hundred Hands, Bangalore. Every detail of the renovation is thoughtful and intentional. But what made it deeply personal for us was the history of the space itself. It used to be a Tamil school, in an area where Tamil families have lived for generations and still do.
Imagine thick lime walls, reclaimed wood, old building acoustics — that weight of time embedded in the structure — and us playing there for their opening ceremony. It was one of the most memorable shows we’ve ever done. Every time we go back, it feels like a lucky charm. The building feels like an instrument that contains us. We hope to perform many of our future works there.
Q14. Do you see the youth getting attracted to and involved in reviving these instruments in this AI-driven world?
Tharun: It has genuinely surprised us. Since 2019, we’ve seen interest from all age groups — not just the Tamil diaspora, but artists from around the world reaching out, buying the Yazh, wanting to learn it, wanting to understand it. The love for Tamil language and its music seems endlessly alive, not fading.
Even when we travel abroad, people inspire us to push further. As an instrument maker, building a guitar feels like a garage experience — achievable, familiar. But making a Yazh feels different. It feels like a responsibility. The story of the Yazh is ultimately a story of cultural memory — of what a community chooses to remember and carry forward. That’s what keeps me going.
Q15. Are you open to collaborations?
SiSu: Always. There’s a lot of work already underway with some incredible artists, and there’s much more to come. This is a genuinely exciting time to be making and performing music, and we want to be right in the middle of all of it.
Q16. What impact are you aiming for on your fan base and young aspiring musicians in the coming years?
Tharun: Live performance is where everything is heading — you can already feel the shift globally. More and more international artists are coming to India, and audiences are showing up for live experiences in a way they haven’t in a long time. That excites us enormously. Our goal is simply to keep the fire alive — to keep expanding this sonic ecosystem we’re building, keep experimenting, keep showing young musicians that there is a deeply compelling, entirely unique path available to them that doesn’t look like anything that came before. That’s the legacy we’re working toward.
Vibhav Rao