K Shanmugam was surprised when a car pulled over at his humble home at Kannarpalayam village near Coimbatore. It was 1992, and he assumed it belonged to tourists on their way to nearby Udhagamandalam. But the men were there because they heard something that made them stop in their tracks. “They’d heard my father play the thudumbu at a temple festival , ” recalls S Samynathan, Shanmugam’s son. In the car were actors Pasupathy and Kumaravel from Chennai-based contemporary Tamil theatre group Koothu-p-pattarai. “That day changed our lives,” says Samynathan, seated in the courtyard of his one-room home.
Thudumbu is a percussion instrument from the Kongu region (that includes Coimbatore, Erode, Tiruppur, Karur, Namakkal, and Salem districts). Thudumbattam , the folk art form, is prevalent in villages around Karamadai, a small town 26 kilometres from Coimbatore. “Every boy in our village plays the instrument,” says Samynathan. “It’s like walking and talking, they learn it subconsciously as they grow up since they are surrounded by its sound.” An art form that was confined to temple festivals — the biggest being the Karamadai Ranganathaswamy Temple’s where over 2,000 artistes perform — travelled to Chennai thanks to Koothu-p-pattarai.
“The actors introduced my father to the late N Muthuswamy, the founder of Koothu-p-pattarai,” says Samynathan. He encouraged Shanmugam to teach his actors to play the thudumbu . “When an actor plays it, the beats set their body in motion; they imbibe a rhythm that prepares them to act. It does what yoga does to the body.” Today, Samynathan, who runs the performance group Cheran Thudumbatta Kalai Kuzhu, follows suit, teaching actors in the theatre group, apart from school and college students in Chennai as well as in other parts of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
Seated by a thudumbu his team members S Masilamani, R Sukumar, and C Pradeep are hand crafting, Samynathan shows us file after file of newspaper clippings on him and his team. He has documented it all, for, none of his seniors or contemporaries did so. “I want to change things,” he says. He is talking about centuries of oppression — the artistes are all from the Arunthathiyar community. “ Thudumbattam has been in existence for over 500 years and we were barred from entering the very temples we performed at,” says the 30-year-old.
Often, the artistes were hustled into the premises and made to wait endlessly until it was time for them to perform. “Once we did, they just handed us a bottle of alcohol as payment,” says Samynathan. “Our names were never printed in the invitation cards despite us performing all night sometimes.” This was during his father’s time. “By the time I started to perform, the situation gradually changed,” he says. But people like him had to work hard to see that they didn’t remain merely as background music.
COIMBATORE, TAMIL NADU 29/07/2019. (for MetroPlus) S. Saminathan runs the Cheran Thudumbattam Kalai Kuzhu, that consists of 15 artistes from villages in and around Karamadai near Coimbatore. Here, his team is involved in the process of making the thudumbu, a drum made of bull skin on Monday July 29, 2019. Photo: M. Periasamy/ The Hindu.
To start off with, he ensured his troupe had the best performers. “I keep an eye out when I visit temple festivals to pick the best boys to perform,” says Samynathan. Cheran has 100 members who are from villages such as Kannarpalayam, Kalattiyur, and Rangarajapuram.
“I have formed a WhatsApp group with all the thudumbattam players in our region and constantly update them with information.” He also lobbies for more recognition of the art form. “The State Government should consider folk art forms for awards such as the Kalaimamani,” feels Samynathan, who holds a Kalaivalarmani, a district award.
Samynathan and his father have worked with several actors — this includes Vijay Sethupathi, Vidharth, Guru Somasundaram, Kalairani, Karthi, and Vishal. The man spends his summers travelling to schools and colleges. “They invite us for classes once a year. If Folk Arts is introduced as a subject at the school level, children will grow up respecting them. It will also give artistes more work,” he says, adding that when there are no programmes, the men work as farm hands.
His team has also travelled abroad to perform. But when the men come back home, they head to the fields to pick curry leaves as daily wagers. Samynathan recalls: “After a tour in France, we were at Chennai to catch a train to Coimbatore.” The men were in a happy state after a good show. But they were brought back to reality with a jolt. “The policemen at the Unreserved Compartment kicked around our thudumbu ,” he says.
COIMBATORE, TAMIL NADU 29/07/2019. (for MetroPlus) S. Saminathan runs the Cheran Thudumbattam Kalai Kuzhu, that consists of 15 artistes from villages in and around Karamadai near Coimbatore. Here, his team is involved in the process of making the thudumbu, a drum made of bull skin on Monday July 29, 2019. Photo: M. Periasamy/ The Hindu.
But such instances are becoming fewer. “My generation has moved beyond caste differences,” says Samynathan. “We worked at it over several years.” And today, the same temples the men were not allowed into, lay out the red carpet for them.
“In 2004, a temple in Mettupalayam printed our names in their festival invitation card,” says Samynathan. “After our performance, we were garlanded, given thalappas (turbans) and our payment was handed to us on a platter with fruits and coconut in front of the main deity.” His father cried happy tears. “He started dancing,” laughs Samynathan. He’d waited for that day all his life.
Cheran Thudumbatta Kalai Kuzhu will perform at DakshinaChitra as part of Aadiperukku and Ayyanar Festival till August 4.
