Osaka: Musician Forges New Musical Field with Unique Gourd Instruments She Created Herself

The Yomiuri Shimbun

14:25 JST, July 19, 2025

OSAKA — A musician in Osaka is opening up a new field in music by transforming gourds into electronic instruments and flutes, and using them to create unique sounds and musical pieces.

Uriho Maruki, a freelance writer who performs music under the name “All Denka Hyotan” (all electric gourds), is growing quite a following with her distinctive instruments made from gourds, which are said to be good luck charms because of their plump roundness.

A modular synthesizer creates sound from 11 electrodes plugged into the surface of a gourd that Maruki has made into an electronic instrument. Another instrument is covered in sensors that react to light from glow sticks, and she is able to change the sound produced by adjusting the amount of light directed at the sensors. Other instruments include an ocarina-like flute and a glass containing small gourds that produce handbell-like sounds when shaken.

Maruki developed her musical style about eight years ago. Word gradually spread about her performances, and these days she is asked to play several times a month at live music clubs and other venues mainly in the Kansai region.

At her concerts, she plays a short melody on each instrument, which she records on a special machine and plays on a loop. She then creates layered music by mixing these sounds.

Gourds are said to be one of the world’s oldest cultivated plants, with their domestication dating back 10,000 years.

“There is a theory that the earliest musical instruments were gourds,” Maruki said. “I hope my activities will make more people become interested in them.”