Sunny Mathew grew up listening to music. “As a kid, the sound of musical dramas and songs coming out of a small suitcase-like box was always a wonder to me. Slowly, gramophones gave way to radios and tape recorders. Later in 1980, I found a floral horn type of gramophone at Madurai. I bought this machine along with a few records. That was the beginning. There was no looking back after that,” narrates Sunny.
And today, Sunny owns ‘Discs and Machines’, an archive of shellac records and gramophones.
The 37-year-old journey has resulted in a museum with a collection of more than one lakh records and over 250 gramophones. This is a first of its kind in the country and has featured in the list of ‘5 different museums to visit in India’ in Label online magazine.
When asked why a museum, he replies, “Machines and records started piling up in the bedroom and living room until we found little space in the house to live. We conducted an exhibition at Kozhikode, and some of the records were stolen. It is then that we decided to build a museum so that people who hold a passion could come visiting.” He isn’t alone in this journey. There is his friend Muhammed Shafi, who often helps him collect rare records.
It is through his link with the Society of Record Collectors and its founder Suresh Chandvanker that he realised the importance of collecting sounds. The oldest of the collection is an 1898 record of an English song. He also has a shellac record that dates back to 1911 in Malayalam. The archive also has a good collection of early south Indian music.
“Very few governments have created a national sounds archive. There is the danger of the history of sound which is only about 160 years old and the national heritage associated with it getting lost. In this situation, private collectors play an important role. They are doing what the government was supposed to do. Sunny Mathew and his museum is one good example.
“What he is doing is really important when it comes to preserving the cultural heritage of sounds,” says Grammy award nominee Reiner Lotz who is here to attend the second anniversary celebrations of ‘Discs and Records’ located next to Bharananganam at Kottayam. It is indeed a museum with a difference and it’s time we acknowledge it.