Pulse of the chenda
G.S. PAUL
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Kallekulangara Achuthankutty Marar’s innovation in Thayambaka won him kudos.
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Photo: K.K.Najeeb
Rhythmic beats: Kallekulangara Achuthankutty Marar.
Kerala is a land of percussion ensembles. Innumerable are the melams in which a large congregation of artistes perform for hours on end, creating rhythmic symphonies.
The rigid structure of the melam religiously followed by the troupe makes it a classical performance. But among the melams, thayambaka is an exception as it is essentially a solo performance and the percussionist’s freedom for ‘manodharma’ is practically limitless. Small wonder then that thayambaka has gained wide popularity over the years, though it is only of recent origin when compared to melams that are centuries old. Now, we have ‘Mizhavil thayambaka,’ ‘villilmel thayambaka’ and so on.
Technique
Thayambaka has its own format and is a chembada-based performance. It embraces three stages – ‘Pathikaalam’ (Chembada vattm), ‘Kooru’ and ‘Eka thaalam,’ which include ‘Edakaalam,’ and ‘Nerkol’ or Erukida.’ While the first is intrinsically elaboration of Chembada (eight beats), the koorus played by artistes are found to have regional differences. Koorus are improvisations on the Chembada. The ‘Palakkadan sailee’ (Palakkaddan style) prefers Adantha kooru and the ‘Thrithaala’ or ‘Malamakkavu’ sailee takes to panchaari (six beats) and Chamba (five beats) koorus.
But when Kallekulangara Achuthankutty Marar presented Thayambaka under the aegis of the Thrissur-based cultural outfit Vedika recently, there was something more to the performance. He opened with the conventional Chembada in the pathikaalam.
The improvisations were exquisite, both in terms of the variegated tones and the immeasurably large number of micro-beats derived from a single beat. The sound produced by rubbing the stick on the instrument in unison with the rhythm was interesting.
After 45 minutes of pathikaalam, Achuthankutty entered into panchaari kooru. And he worked on this kooru for nearly 15 minutes before entering the edakaalam.
But the audience was surprised, as they were expecting the conventional Chamba kooru, which traditionally follows the panchaari kooru.
According to Achuthankutty: “In the name of panchaari kooru, the practice was to play Chembada in misra nata (seven beats), the short form of Adantha.
This necessitated deliberate corrections at the end to give it a semblance of panchaari, which was not aesthetic. What I did was to anchor on the tisra (three beats), the prototype of panchaari which enabled me to complete the kooru in panchaari alone. So, panchaari kooru has gained an individuality of its own now.”
The crisp and neat kooru won him applause from the listeners. Achuthankutty was supported on the edamthala by Kottakkal Vijayaraghavan and Thiruvelloor Suresh, on the valamthala by Aneesh, Ajeesh, Ranjith and Ayyanthole Kannan and on the elathalam by Kuttan Nair Kailiyaadu, Thiruvanbadi Surendran and Thiruvanbadi Viswanathan.
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