Velu Aasan: Padma Shri recipient and ‘parai’ virtuoso

On May 27, a man in a white silk dhoti and shirt—his hair tied in a ponytail and his long beard as tamed as it could be—walked the red carpet inside Rashtrapati Bhavan to receive the Padma Shri from President Droupadi Murmu. He was shaking with excitement. Having grown up in Alanganallur, a hamlet on the outskirts of Tamil Nadu’s Madurai district, the 52-year-old had never heard of Rashtrapati Bhavan or seen a photo. “I was speechless. This recognition is not just for me but for the entire community of artistes working to promote traditional parai art globally,” says Velu Aasan.

A few months earlier, in January, he got a call asking for his personal details. He had no clue why. The voice at the other end was speaking in Hindi, and he thought it was a prank. Then he heard English and got more confused. “Tamil, Tamil,” he said. Moments later, someone told him in Tamil that he was getting the Padma Shri. He hadn’t heard of it. He then called one of his friends in the state cultural department in Chennai and asked him, “What award are you giving me? Is it the Kalaimamani award?” That was the highest civilian award in Tamil Nadu, and Velu assumed that was the one. However, from the officer’s reply, he realised that the state government had not shortlisted him for any award. Naturally, he thought the earlier call was a prank.

A week later, the same officer from Chennai called and told him about the prestige of the Padma Shri, and that he would meet the president. “The call was from Delhi. It is true. I will give your details to the officers in Delhi,” the officer said.

Velu was on cloud nine. He immediately took out his parai, the percussion instrument, and played it non-stop for more than an hour.

The parai, a traditional instrument popular in south India, was once stigmatised, relegated to communities deemed “untouchable”. However, in recent decades, the drum has become a powerful symbol of identity, resilience and pride within the dalit community.

The parai’s frame is made from three pieces of neem wood, secured by metal fasteners to form a circle of about 35cm. Cow or bull hide is stretched over this wooden frame and glued using natural resin. There are two percussion sticks—the thin one, 28cm long, is called sunddu kucchi (high pitch), and the thicker one, 18cm, is called adi kucchi (bass note). They are usually made of bamboo.

Before every performance, the parai is heated to further tighten the drumhead; it is said that a properly heated parai can be heard three kilometres away. The practitioner holds it while standing and sometimes sings and dances, too.

Contemporary parai performances incorporate storytelling, folk songs and even fusion with modern music. The drum now resonates with calls for social equality, respect and the preservation of Tamil folk art. This is in part thanks to veterans such as Velu who took it from the most backward villages around Madurai to the global stage. He runs one of the most successful folk art troupes in Tamil Nadu—Alanganallur Thappisai Kuzhu—and trains hundreds in parai every year.

Born in an impoverished dalit family as Velmurugan, Velu began playing the parai at 13. Saevugan, one of his vathiyars (teachers), asked him to play it after seeing him dancing to its music at a temple festival. When he got the parai, Velu drummed up a unique beat that had the villagers dancing. His father, Ramayya, who was part of the team playing the parai at the festival, watched on in awe. Saevugan patted him on the back and said, “You will become a master of the art soon.”

The reception at home was not as warm. “The comments were mostly discouraging,” Velu recalls. When he returned home, his mother did not even look at him. She said, “This is funeral music. Why do you want to follow your father? Go to school and be successful in life.”

Velu started going with his father and his team to play the parai at funerals and festivals. But when he came home—one room with a thatched roof—his mother would berate him. At times, she would even throw plates at him in anger when he sat down for dinner. At one point, when his father fell ill, he lost the little support he had. He had to stop performing. For the next eight years, he did all sorts of menial jobs to survive; he was poor at studies and did not want to go to school. But his love for the instrument never died. He played with whatever object he could find. “I might not have touched the parai for eight years, but I never stopped creating music,” he says.

One night, fed up with his mother’s scolding, he left home and began walking. He reached the Madurai-Chennai highway and slept on the footpath. The following morning, a young man saw him lying there and took him to a nearby tea shop. He bought him a glass of tea and some biscuits. An hour later, Saevugan came and took him away. With renewed vigour, Velu began his tutelage under Saevugan and Malaichaami vathiyar. There was no looking back. Since then, he was part of every temple festival and parai became his full-time job.

The money, though, was meagre, and he had to work as a table cleaner in restaurants and as a lift operator at a private hospital in Madurai. But his heart was elsewhere. Once, with a lift full of patients at the top floor, Velu drifted off into his own world, eyes shut, drumming on the steel doors. Moments later, the shouts of the patients woke him up. He was thrown out of the hospital. That is when he realised that his life was only the parai.

The breakthrough came in 2007 through Chennai Sangamam, a cultural festival celebrating folk art. It was conceived by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Kanimozhi. Almost two decades later, his troupe is electrifying audiences at several festivals and even online—their videos have lakhs of views on YouTube. Eventually, his mother, too, understood the genius in him and celebrated him in later years.

Parai literally translates to ‘speak’ or ‘make sound’. “The early humans began talking through this parai music even before a spoken language came into existence,” he says.

With every beat, Velu is trying to prolong this legacy. His music in films such as Kumki, Kayal, and the most popular ‘Madura Kulunga’ from Subramaniapuram directed the masses to this art form. The next step is to bring parai music the same amount of fandom as hip-hop.

Even if he cannot do it alone, he has imparted the knowledge to younger generations in not only Tamil Nadu, but also in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore. He has also made sure that more girls get into the traditionally male-dominated art form. His three children—Muneeswaran, Selvi and Dhanalakshmi—also learned from him, though only the son is a professional.

“Parai is my life and soul,” says Velu. “No other instrument has the power to inject the sorrow of loss into your muscles and make them swing into motion. This music played at funerals is called saavu adi.”

Velu presents a unique confluence of artistic discipline and creative versatility. As he beats the drum with the sticks, he effortlessly breaks many myths, elevating the instrument from its historical depths.

But despite all of this, Velu still lives on the edge of poverty. “That doesn’t matter,” he says. For him, the art form is immortal. And by breathing new life into this same art form, perhaps this artiste, too, becomes immortal.