First song with yazh instrument gets recorded

A friend of Tharun, Sivasubramanian had written a song for a comic series. “The song is about the story of a girl with superpowers from the Sangam era. We thought the context was very much relatable to yazh. Rapper Syan Saheer joined us and we launched a video song called Azhagi. The song was shot and directed by photographer Naveen Sekar. The only live instrument was yazh and this will be the world’s first recorded song with yazh,” Tharun Sekar informs DT Next. 

He is the founder of Uru Custom Instruments that aims to modernise Indian instruments and make them sustainable for the coming years. “Soon after we redesigned yazh, we met a lot of musicians and research scholars to gather more information about lesser-known traditional instruments. We are not sure how musicians played yazh during that period and we are still working on that. Since the notation system is similar to a guitar, for the video song, I used my guitar playing skills,” he adds. 

Tharun says that he is getting orders from musicians and singers in Harvard, Norway and Dubai. “People are slowly getting to know about yazh. Some wanted to buy it because of the beautiful sound of the instrument and a few buy it to know the history behind it. Once the instrument reaches a larger section of people, we will be having more people playing the instrument,” Tharun remarks.