An India, rich and lush with sounds and music, makes for a wonderful opportunity. To discover with the power of music and tunes.
Sounds of India was conceived to helps travellers and travel lovers discover the subcontinent through its authentic sounds and music. The idea was to add an enriched aural layer which augments storytelling.
The vision was rather simple. Would it not be wonderful to have local music, tunes of the land and folk sounds of India, help travellers navigate through its culture - people and places, mythologies, communities, fables, customs and culture. Digitally.
Conceptual foundation with design thinking, technology & interpreting culture.
The content and technology team worked synchronously with the strategy and design folks on building the platform, its features, API ecosystem and several interesting discovery tools to make the India discovery simpler and sensorial.
Every adventure needs its collaborating partners.
Sounds of India, needed us to work and collaborate with domain experts who were both assiduous students and masters of their discipline - sound and music, and who believed in the larger vision for the project.
And we found them with Sunoh, a boutique sound consulting and production firm (and later partners in our Collective). It is helmed by founders with impeccable credentials, long respected careers in the industry and most importantly, possessing a nuanced understanding of music. They, we rightly felt could could make the project sing.
Discussions, debates, collaboration sessions and jams helped define what Sounds of India was to be.
Together a lot can happen.
The team and studios worked diligently, creating, researching, curating and collaborating with local musicians and creators from across the country, putting together an encyclopaedia of local sounds, local music and local instruments.
Creating, curating an India of tunes.
From the sublime hills of Nagaland to the vastness of Kutch and from the lofty climes of Jammu and Kashmir to the depths of the Kanyakumari, a compendium of authentic Indian music and sounds was built. With their years of experience in music performing, composing, curating and collaborating, Sunoh helped make Sounds of India, a sound adventure. The first of its kind, we suspect across the globe.
Mapping it right.
Extensive research and careful curation helped stitch local tales, places, stories and trivia to the sounds and tunes of India.
With design thinking and co-imagining, this was all about how technology, content, design and user experience can join ranks to build something purposeful. Something that could be larger than the sum of its parts.
Here you were led by the ears in a way :) through a larger story of India.
Like any adventure, there were also gems along the way, that we discovered.
Fantastic stories were unearthed. That the Ravanahatha, found in Rajasthan and Sri Lanka, in fact dates back in mythology to the epic Ramayana. This musical instrument from India was the predecessor to the Ravana Strong, which the Arab traders took to the west where it morphed into the western Violin. Or the legend of the boatman’s song that becomes the rallying cry in the annual snake boat race in Kerala.
The project took us to Mylapore, one of the oldest precincts of Chennai, to see the tradition of temple dancing revived so richly by a cultural trust and its guardian's singular vision. Meeting such communities and keepers of culture was extremely gratifying. Every adventure is a school in its own way, with its many lessons and teachers.
And a new beginning.
The mapping of authentic content allowed the body of sounds to serve like audio compasses, gently goading travellers to discover a new story, a new region, a folktale, a tribe or a chapter from mythology.
Sounds of India is not an end in itself. Rather it opens up a world of opportunities in the realm of music and sound through inventive applications of design and technology.
Imaginative adventures like the Sound Map of India, are as much about collaboration between imaginative storytellers as they are about an ability in each to tell it with their own music.
(Sound Maps of India is an IP of NYUCT Design Labs, created in partnership with Sunoh)