Person · poet & institution-builder
Vallathol Narayana Menon
Also known as Vallathol, Mahakavi Vallathol
One of the three great modern Malayalam poets, who founded Kerala Kalamandalam in 1930 to save Kathakali as its feudal patrons collapsed. He raised the money partly by lottery, brought Kutiyattam and Mohiniyattam under the same roof, and replaced household apprenticeship with a syllabus and salaried teachers.
- Date
- 1878 – 1958
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Tradition
- Kalamandalam records; Malayalam literary history
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
He went almost completely deaf in his thirties, which did not stop him from running an institution built around music and percussion. He also wrote the Malayalam translation of the Rigveda and campaigned for temple entry for all castes.
Connections (2)
- Monastic foundationKalamandalam, Thrissur
Vallathol founded Kerala Kalamandalam in 1930, when Kathakali was going down with the aristocratic households that had paid for it, and replaced household apprenticeship with a salaried faculty and a curriculum. He brought Kutiyattam and Mohiniyattam in as well, which is why three very different Kerala forms are now taught in one institution and why all three survived the century.
- Institutional successionKūṭiyāṭṭam
Vallathol founded Kerala Kalamandalam in 1930 and brought Kūṭiyāṭṭam, Kathakali, Mohiniyattam and Thullal out of hereditary families and temple compounds into a salaried school with entry by audition. It saved several of them and changed all of them: training became a syllabus, performance moved to a proscenium, and students from outside the hereditary castes — and eventually non-Hindus — learned forms that had been caste and temple property for centuries.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Vallathol Narayana Menon”. The subject’s own writings where they survive, and the standard biographical literature.
Open Vallathol Narayana Menon in the repository →