KOCHI: The lockdown has people tapping into their hidden talents and experimenting with new things. With live performances going off stage, artists, especially those performing traditional art forms like ottamthullal, are finding new ways to promote their art. In the first few weeks of lockdown, Ranjith Tripunithura, a professional kathakali and ottamthullal artist, decided to use his time spent off stage to come up with a project that he had been considering for quite some time.
Ranjith came up with a programme called ‘Thullal Sangeetha Maadhuri’. “It is for the first time that an artist has sung thullal padams and Carnatic song based on the same raagas. It is sort of a comparison,” said Ranjith. What he did was to select 20 raagas from the Carnatic music pantheon and thullal padams to come up with sort of a comparison between the two traditions.
“From April 29 to May 8, I sung two raagas every day with a time limit of 10 minutes, shot a video of the same and posted on Facebook,” said Ranjith. According to him, he presented two padams from thullal and then one Carnatic song based on the same raaga.
“This is to create awareness about the importance of raagas in the thullal art form. As of now, nobody has done such a thing. The thullal padams have been taken from different stories like Kalyanasougandhikam, Kiratham, Santhanagopalam, Ramanucharitham and Pulindeemoksham,” he said.
Ranjith’s musical project has been on the cards for a while. “I have been working on the idea for sometime. So, during the lockdown, I discussed the same with my guru Kalamandalam Prabhakaran. I presented the idea to him and got his complete support. It was only after getting his approval that I began recording the episodes at my home,” he said. The videos have been shot by his wife.
“I send the videos to my guru for corrections and suggestions.” The artist has so far uploaded 10 episodes in the series with every video except the last comprising two songs. The raagas included are naata, kalyani, dwijawanthi, sindubhairavi, shahaana, punnagavarfali, shama, bhairavi, sriragam, ataana, anandabhairavi, kaanada, saveri, mukhari, neelambari, bowli, yadukulakamboji, pantuvarali, kurinji and huseni.
“The last video has three songs. The episodes end with madhyamavathi raaga,” said Ranjith. He is also the first thullal artist to perform three different types of thullal-ottam, seethangan and parayan in the United States in September last year.