The Instrument Nobody Else Has: Koyikkal’s Folklore Museum

The Folklore Museum on the ground floor of Koyikkal Palace was established in 1992 by the Kerala Department of Archaeology, and it is laid out across thirteen galleries with the numismatics collection upstairs. Its subject is not art. It is the material culture of ordinary working and ritual life in this part of Kerala, collected at the point when most of it was going out of use.

The Chandravalayam

One object justifies the drive. The Chandravalayam is a percussion instrument used to accompany Villadichampattu — the bow song of southern Kerala and the far south of Tamil Nadu, in which a long bow strung with bells is played as an instrument while a story is sung and narrated through the night. The department dates the instrument type to the fourteenth century, and Koyikkal is reported to be the only place in Kerala where one is on public display.

Take a moment with that claim, because it is the kind that ought to be checked rather than repeated. It is the department’s own and we have found nothing contradicting it, but “the only one in Kerala” is a statement about every other collection in the state, which is not the sort of thing anyone can verify exhaustively. What is safely true either way is the shape of the situation: an instrument belonging to a living but shrinking performance tradition, of which very few examples have made it into public collections at all. In the case you will see a shallow ridged disc, unglamorous and much repaired — which is what a working instrument looks like when it is finally retired.

Why a bow song needs a museum

Villadichampattu is one of those traditions that survives in practice while its objects disappear. The performance continues at temples and festivals; the instruments are made, used, broken and replaced. Nothing about that process produces heirlooms. Museums end up holding the pieces that fell out of the cycle — which is why a folklore collection is not a lesser sort of history museum but a different one, preserving the category of thing that nobody thought worth preserving at the time.

The rest of the collection follows the same logic. Musical instruments across the temple and folk traditions — the kokkara among them — household and occupational implements, terracotta, stone and metalwork, and the masks and costumes of ritual performance forms including Theyyam and Thullal. Nothing here was made to be looked at. All of it was made to be used, which is why the wear on the objects is part of the exhibit.

How to get the most from an hour

Go slowly through the instrument galleries; they are the strongest part and reward comparison — the same drum idea worked out in three sizes for three different jobs. Look at the tools with an eye to the crop and the coast they belonged to. And do not skip the building itself while you are looking at what is in it: the nadumuttam, the central courtyard the whole nalukettu is arranged around, is the object in the collection that you can stand inside.

The coin museum upstairs is covered in A Venetian Coin in a Kerala Village, and the disputed history of the house itself is in The Palace That Is a Seat, Not a House. Practical details are on the Koyikkal Palace page — it closes on Mondays.