Expertise With Both Palms Is Not The Sole Highlight Of This Flamboyant Kerala Drummer

Towards the end of his 90-minute concert on the Kerala drum, Kalpathy Balakrishnan conjures up a unique slice of showmanship that has won him admiration from spectators for the past two decades. The percussionist will keep changing the stick between his right and left hands while coming up with roaring rolls typical of the last phase of thayambaka—a traditional art that has earned him widespread fame and appreciation.

Purists may write off this brief act as mere gimmick. True, the bit doesn’t enrich the art’s aesthetics—it has no appeal beyond the visual. Yet, in the one-and-a-half centuries’ history of thayambaka that uses the stick only in just one hand, no practitioner has been so evidently ambidextrousness as Balakrishnan, 50. Each time he does it, the spectators respond in high ecstasy making the artiste feel yet again that this ‘stickobratics’ is his USP.

Nonetheless, to focus solely on his easiness in employing both hands will only amount to taking a narrow view of Balakrishnan’s mastery over his art and the instrument. For, even if he was just a right-hander or leftie, the dusky percussionist with expressive eyes would still have emerged as a frontliner with the enormity of his sheer talent, skills, imagination and dedication peppered with expressions of child-like innocence.

It was a quarter century ago that Balakrishnan chose to near-completely switch over to the right hand as a thayambaka artiste. “I am primarily a leftie,” reveals the drummer, a native of Kalpathy suburb in Palakkad of east-central Kerala. “I would still hurl a stone more comfortably and accurately with the left hand. In childhood, I used to play the marble holding and striking it with the left hand. Naturally, I learned my art too (from the age of 8), using my left hand to roll and the right to tap (on the circular chenda surface).”

By teenage, Balakrishnan debuted in thayambaka after training from Karekattuparambu Appu Nair, his first guru and close relative, who stayed in the neighbourhood. That brief presentation was in the local Kottamkulathi Bhagavati temple. He took higher studies under the more-known Mankurissi Appa Marar. Balakrishnan’s youthful days as a chenda artiste were also boosted by his steady participation alongside maestro Kallekulangara Achuthankutty Marar, elder to him by more than 10 years.

Not many in the Kerala would find charm in a chenda player being a southpaw. In south India, generally, the left hand is supposed to be not the ideal one for use in an art. Not different was the sensibility in the chenda circuit. As some of the senior practitioners, including his guru, began telling him about an “awkwardness” in playing chenda with the left hand, Balakrishnan decided to finally switch over to the right.

“I could do it in a matter of two months,” he gushes, with apparent pride, making little effort to sense the ambidextrousness in him. “I stayed those days at Appa Marar’s house and was guided by chenda player Kallur Narayanankutty,” he recalls about the quarter-century-old episode. “I would get up at 4 in the morning and do the practice for almost four hours. After breakfast and lunch, we’d resume the session around 3 in the afternoon and continue it till, say, 5.30. In free hours, I will roam about the village a bit, returning sometimes with vegetables and groceries for my guru and the family.”

The subsequent thayambaka is something Balakrishnan likes to term as “my second debut”. From then on, he has been a right-hander, very busy as a thayambaka artiste particularly in the last two decades during which he brings out a flash of his left-handed show, as if a bright relic from his evolving days.

Today, Kalpathy is an exponent of thayambaka—both in its single and double variety (which involves a second main artiste amid the time-keepers on the bass chenda and a set of ilathalam artistes). In doubles, he is seen frequently playing along with the equally accomplished Porur Unnikrishnan, while his juniors in the collaboration comprise an array such as Athalur Sivan, Mattannur Udayan, Sukapuram Dileep, Kallur Unnikrishnan and Chirakkal Nidheesh.

It is not just in chenda that Balakrishnan shines among Kerala’s traditional percussion concerts. In the harmonic panchavadyam involving some 60 players of five instruments, he occasionally revels in the slender timila drum, often giving good accompaniment and competition to the opposite row of maddalam drummers that would consist of even a stalwart like Cherpulassery Sivan, now turning 70. Balakrishnan also fondly recalls the days he used to flank timila masters like the late Appu Marar, Maniyan Marar and Kunjukutta Marar of the Pallavoor trio. “I have had occasions to play the maddalam, too. It’s another matter I have got no training in any instrument other than the chenda,” he says.

One of his most cherished memories is related with the legendary thayambaka artiste Thrithala Kesavan. “I was an early teenager, dark and scrawny—playing with the left hand. Kesavettan happened to see me perform. So excited was he that the maestro came up on to the stage and took up a chenda from the man to my side and started keeping the beats! Well, honestly, I didn’t at that point in time know who this titan was. Now when I look back it’s amazing!”