Thiruvananthapuram: A Kerala-based musician is launching online classes for teaching 'Chenda' and 'Edakka', two popular temple instruments, to promote traditional art forms of the state among Non-Resident Keralites. Prakasan Pazhambalacode, a city-based exponent, is all set to impart the lessons of the drums to Keralites residing overseas through 'Skype', a premium voice-over-IP service and instant messaging client.
Drum enthusiasts, living in places like London, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Riyad, Muscat and Dubai are the students of the first batch of his online course, which will begin next month. He said large number of Keralites, especially those living outside the country, were interested to learn percussions and many of them were not getting chances as they cannot come frequently and stay in the home state.
"Percussions are part of Malayalees's self and sole. We can not think of any festival or celebration sans drums like 'Chenda'. I used to get enquiries from many NRKs through Facebook to start online classes," Prakasan said. He said he was trying to use the technology for the growth of traditional percussions and the online teaching
would bring revolutionary changes.
"My students belong to various age group. Though learning percussions was a childhood dream for many of them, they could not pursue it because of various reasons. Their keen interest and persistent demand have given me courage to go ahead with
the plan," he said.
He said there would be four classes through Skype each month. Students would use drum practise pads for learning. "Admissions are going on. Time adjustment will be one of the major challenges of online classes as it will be different in many countries," he said.
The 48-year-old musician has plans to directly visit his students in the respective countries at particular intervals to evaluate their progress. Prakasan earlier taught 'chenda' to the inmates of two central prisons in the state-Poojappura and Viyyur. He also imparts percussion lessons to the inmates of Sree Chithra Poor Home and the students of the Government School for Visually Impaired here free of cost.
