‘ Why this instrument and why not western instruments like guitar and piano or keyboard ?’ – Even my mother used to ask me this question . ‘ There are thousands of people playing such instruments , but how many are there to play our native instruments ?’ – this was ( and is ) my reasoning . I want to people to go back to our roots and listen to ‘ our own ’ instruments . This is my objective .
In December 2017 I joined college . To impress my seniors and also my teachers , I started teaching ‘ parai ’. There was a programme called ‘ Tamizh Thendral ’ in my college during which I played parai along with some of my
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My brush with teaching parai continued and I started teaching outsiders too . In 2019 , a gentleman from Sri Lanka approached me and requested me to teach him . After learning for 10 days , he gave me an amount , asked me to apply for passport so that I could travel to France -along with him .
I went to Paris and I was there for a month , teaching students to play parai . That was my first overseas travel . Only after this did my parents and my neighbours realised that parai can make such things possible and started to understand the real value of that instrument .
Tell us about some of the most fascinating instruments you play and are trying to document .
I play close to 120 instruments and perform 20 types of traditional dance forms-like paraiyaattam , karagaattam , oyilaattam , saattaikucchiyaattam , periya kambaattam etc . I take ideas from ancient tamizh literature and redesign the instruments mentioned in those works . There were 5 landscapes in the ancient tamizh land- Kurinji , Mullai , Marudam , Neithal , Paalai .
An instrument called ‘ pouni ’ belongs to the Marudam landscape and this is my most favourite instrument .
How do you find new instruments to collect and play ? Are you always looking ?
I started collecting instruments in the year 2020 . Before that , I would play instruments like urumi and udukkai apart from parai . In fact , during the lockdown , I started taking a lot of online classes to students from 18 countries . I used the fees to offer financial support to struggling nearly 4000 artistes during lockdown . It was then that I came across a lot of tribal instruments since I traveled a lot .
The artists gave me those instruments saying they would be safe with me and that I was the right person to keep those . Thus , I ended up with many instruments in my custody .
You mentioned that you also design certain instruments yourself . How do you go about doing that ?