PALAKKAD: A father-son duo playing percussion instruments and enthralling audience is quite common. But how about a thayambaka performance by a mother-daughter combo? Definitely a rare sight, isn’t it?
Sreepriya, a high school teacher, and her nine-year-old daughter Sreeparvathy are now winning hearts with their scintillating thayambaka performance.
Sreepriya, a teacher at Sacred Heart CMI Public School, Perinthalmanna, and Sreeparvathy, a class IV student of the same school, started learning percussion during the Covid-induced lockdown two years ago. They took the lessons from Sreepriya’s husband Thrithala Sreeni Poduval, who has been a chenda artist and a sopanam singer for the past three decades.
Sreeparvathy began chenda lessons when she was seven. Last year, the mother and daughter staged their ‘arangettam’ (first official performance before public). “Both of us learned the art during the lockdown period. We have performed thayambaka together on 23 stages,” said Sreepriya, 34, a native of Parassery.
“My daughter and I have performed at Thirumandamkunnu temples at Kongad and Angadipuram and at Chinakathoor temple at Palappuram,” said Sreepriya.Sreeni, who performs in the classical ‘Malamakkavu style’, belongs to a family of noted percussionists. He is the great-grandson of one of the doyens in the field, Kalamandalam Kesava Poduval. Sreeni is the grandson of Thrithala Kunhikrishna Poduval, also a renowned artist. His three uncles also carved a niche for themselves in the field -- the late Aliparambu Sivarama Poduval, Thrithala Shankara Krishnan and the late Thrithala Kesava Das.
Sreeni was tutored in the Malamakkavu style by his grandfather Thrithala Kunhikrishna Poduval and uncles Kesavadas and Shankara Krishnan. It is the same style that has been passed on to Sreepriya and Sreeparvathy. The family legacy does not end there as the youngest member has already evinced interest in thayambaka. Sreeparvathy’s younger brother Sreehari, 5, who is in UKG, plans to stage his arangettam two years from now.