Sunny’s Gramophone Museum and Record Archive is abound with gramophones of varying pedigree, and several records - over 100,000 of them. Of these, some are century old and some are the only remaining copies.

It’s then little wonder that the museum was the venue for a seminar on ‘saving for posterity - drawing the next steps in preserving audio-visual recordings of Indian origin for the future.’

“The cultural heritage of our country lies unnoticed and unprotected in old gramophone records”, said Sunny Mathew, curator of the museum. “While most have been lost, it is our duty to save the remaining from disappearing into oblivion.”

Sunny was joined by Dr. Suresh Chandvankar of Society of Indian Record Collectors, Dr. Joe Peters – an ethnomusicologist from Singapore, 2014 Grammy Nominee and discographer Dr. Rainer E. Lotz among others who are unwaveringly recovering what’s inscribed in the grooves of these 100-yr old pressings.

You can’t help but marvel at how fastidiously Sunny has preserved records of Abdul Karim Khan, Ustad Kurshid Ali Khan, Gauhar Jaan, Kesarbai Kerkar, Miss Rani among others. The museum also houses 300 gramophones.