Feb 22 2026 to Feb 22 2026 7 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

Have you ever heard a kudamuzha? The five-faced drum disappeared centuries ago. As did the yaazh harp, the urumi, the parai. Instruments that once shaped Tamil ritual soundscapes, gone silent.

Urupaanar brought them back.

THOL is their debut album, the world’s first recorded entirely on the yaazh. It’s also a live performance, a sonic excavation of Tamil antiquity where music becomes a site of memory and landscape. Drawing from Sangam-era traditions, the eight-piece collective uses reconstructed ancient instruments to create sound that is both archival and immediate.

The performance follows the thinai system from Tolkāppiyam, which understands emotion as inseparable from environment. Mountains, forests, farmlands, seashores, arid regions: each landscape gives rise to distinct emotional states and rhythms. Feeling is shaped by climate, terrain, flora, sound, movement. Music emerges from ecology, carrying the textures of place and the sensorial conditions of lived life.

Ninety minutes of ancient sonic ecosystems reactivated in contemporary performance.

Part of Pravāha 2026, The Body As Space: A Journey Through The Senses. This year’s festival is built around what we hear, smell, touch, taste, and see. Eight days of multisensory experiences through classical music, contemporary dance, installations, and conversations.

In collaboration with:

Presented by:

Performers

Urupaanar
Group
Urupaanar is a contemporary Tamil music collective dedicated to reviving lost, forgotten, and silenced sound traditions from South India. Active for over two and a half years, the eight-piece ensemble also serves as the home band of URU Instruments, a research-led initiative committed to reconstructing musical instruments from the Sangam era and earlier Tamil antiquity. Their practice is grounded in close engagement with Tamil literary sources, historical research, and hands-on instrument-making, approaching music as a living archive rather than a static inheritance.

Through URU Instruments, Urupaanar has revived ancient instruments such as the Yazh and Kudamuzha, which had disappeared from Tamil musical practice for centuries, adapting them for contemporary performance while retaining their structural and philosophical foundations. The collective’s debut album, Thol, is the world’s first album recorded entirely on the Yazh and draws inspiration from the thinai space–time framework, where landscape, emotion, and music are deeply intertwined. Urupaanar has performed at major festivals and cultural platforms across India and was recognised by the Serendipity Arts Foundation (2023–24) for its innovative, research-driven approach to music-making.