Pageantry of Percussionists from Kerala in Mumbai

I remember going listening to the Panchavadhyam ( concert of five instruments) as a kid when my Father took me to the festival at the Ernakulathappan temple in Cochin. There were a score of drummers in dhotis had chenda's tied to their waists or hung from their shoulders and were slowly drumming up a rhythm with sticks and plastered fingers,behind them were men in similar costumes keeping time with cymbals and yet others waiting with semi-circular trumpets. As this orchestra worked up a tempo, there was growing number of devotees who stopped to listen and nearly all of them were keeping time by nodding their heads. Some were holding up their hands and marking time with their hands like self appointed conductors of this philarmonic! It seemed as if the music had hypnotized the whole crowd as eyes became glazed and more heads and hands were found to rock with the rhythm divine! It continued till the drums and the cymbals clashed in a climax and the end was marked in a gentle descent of notes. People then dispersed and there was a silence in the temple courtyard that was serene and spiritual. My father's tone as he asked me was also somehow calm and soft, even reflective as the effect of this musical ritual wore off.



I came across this ritual many years later at the Trichur Pooram and it resembled a rave party at mid noon.Yhe crowds were mammoth and the drummers seemed to be lost in a frenzy of their own.. but the sight of almost a hundred drums,cymbals and trumpets in metronome like precision was simply to use a cliche' "awesome" if not divine!! This time around however, I was a teenager and soon found myself rocking to the rhythm and waving my hands in time and feeling the thrill as the venjarams were swung up up in a flourish by the mahouts on the caparisoned pachyderms, while these gentle beasts incidentally seemed to be swaying their ears as if in appreciation to the music and festivities on display.

The Trichur Pooram Festival.. the music starts from the 50th second of this video :)



If you wish to experience this and you are in Mumbai.. well you are lucky! The details of a live performance being arranged by Keli an organisation that promotes folk arts from Kerala has a performance near Horniman Circle

Click Here for the TOI article
Click Here

Components and variations of these forms include the Shingerimelam, the Theyambakam,the Pandimelam, the Ilinjithara and I may upload this on a later date..:)