We report the observation of coherent phonon modes in zinc oxide nanostructures synthesized by arc exploding technique (AET). The band gap (Eg) is estimated to be 3.3eV from UV-absorption spectra. The UV resonance Raman spectra (UVRRS) revealed the presence of multiple longitudinal optical (LO) phonon modes demonstrating the transformation of zinc to zinc oxide as a function of ultra-sonication time. The observed multiple A1(LO) Raman active phonons in ZnO nanostructures were attributed to atomic displacement parallel to wurtzite c-axis. Higher order harmonics and intensity variations in multiple LO phonon modes were interpreted using cascade model in resonant spectra. The appearance of E2 (low) at ~101cm−1 was observed with higher processing time along with enhanced multiple LO phonon modes, indicating the oscillations of zinc sub-lattice. The Zn to ZnO evolution was also confirmed using Photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy showing band-edge emission at 380nm.