GUWAHATI: The warm and mellow resonance produced by gourd-based instruments is integral to Indian classical music, said well-known Tripura instrumentalist Pankaj Kumar Das. After a 25-year effort, he developed a modified guitar, Padma Veena, with gourd resonance, the first such guitar variant in the world.
“Unlike the guitar that we borrowed from the Western world, veena, ektara, tanpura, etc., are not made of plywood. They derive their tonal quality from gourd resonators,” Das, an MSc in physics and assistant headmaster of a government higher secondary school, told this newspaper.
He designed his acoustic slide guitar, the Padma Veena, specifically for Indian classical music, featuring 22 strings, compared to six found in a guitar. He lamented that Padma Veena had not yet received the recognition it deserved.
In addition to wood, Das used a gourd in creating Padma Veena to have the gourd resonance. According to him, gourd resonance is much richer than plywood resonance. He improved the guitar’s acoustics to integrate features of traditional Indian instruments such as veena, sitar, and sarod, with a focus on enhancing the sonometer component of the guitar to unlock its potential for playing Indian classical music.
He added a gourd to the main body and made some changes in the lap steel acoustic guitar to blend traditional and modern musical elements. The gourd is dried up and processed rigorously before it is used in place of the plywood sonometer.
“Using a gourd is cost-effective when compared with a plywood sonometer,” said Das, adding, “In classical music, many believe that the sarangi can go closest to the human singing voice. When I started playing the guitar in the early 1980s, I wondered why not the guitar too?”
