It is not even the end of the performance and the audience is in a daze. After more than an hour into the performance of a traditional percussion ensemble from Kerala, the drums have beat their way into every corner of the auditorium, sending the audience dizzy with rhythm.
The performance of Melapaddam, a percussion and vocal composition normally performed as a prelude to a Kathakali drama, was the introductory ear opener of the four-day Keli classical rhythmic festival, which ended on Saturday. The festival, organized by Keli and Prithvi Theatre, featured veteran artistes leading traditional rhythmic precussion ensembles that flourish all over Kerala, often attached to temples or Kathakali.
The exhilaration that many in the audience felt at the end of these performances seems hardly surprising given that the art form is integrated with the fervour of temple ritual, festival and procession. The magnificent performance on Thursday, for example, with 60 percussion artists on the Chenda, could easily have drummed the most disbelieving in to a giddy faith.
For 75-year-old Kalamandalam Appukuty Poduval, the initiation into the Maddalam, a large traditional Kerala drum slung horizontally across the hip, was itself in the nature of a calling. "When I was 11 I went to the Tiruvillumala temple festival," he says.
"I was drumming my fingers idly on the temple lamp in time with the music when my fingers suddenly cracked and began bleeding," Venkichen Swamy, Kerala's legendary percussion artiste, who was performing there, saw the incident and took on the boy as his disciple. Last week's concert series was dedicated to Vankichen Swamy. Kalamandalam Poduval, now considered the leading exponent of the Maddalam, was in town with four other veterans of different instruments. These include Chakkamkulam Appu Marar and Alipparamb Sivarama Poduval on the Chenda, a medium sized drum like instrument played with sticks, Kuzhur Narayana Marar on an instrument known as the Thimila, and P.K. Narayanan Namiar, an exponent of another rhythmic instrument, the Mizhavu.
Unlike most percussion instruments which are used to complement music or perform solo, these artistes can form massive ensembles that perform for hours on end on their own.
The Melapadam for example, moved away from being just a prelude for a Kathakali performance to a full fledged percussion performance in its own right. And huge temple festival, like the one in Trichur, may have hundreds of artists playing in the processions, like the magnificent Pandimelam that was performed on Thursday with 60 artists.
"This is a grassroot tradition, although it is technically very sophisticated," says Subash Chandra, former director of programmes at the National Centre For Performing Arts.
"They are performed in the open spaces of the temple and street, and since they are part of te temple, they, like the timple, contribute to the life of the people.
Mr. Chandra points out that much as urban stages may not be so open to these folk forms, the same small halls cannot fully replicate their effect in their original setting.
"Trichur festival, with 100s of elephants and drummers, thousands of people, produces such physical reaction among the people, some thing that can never happen in sophisticated urbanspaces," he says. "What happens in those festivals is a sight for gods to see."