NEW DELHI, March 10 -- While interacting with Ramshi Pattuvam, a popular folklore academy award winner and folk singer from Kerala, recently on the sidelines of a programme at Margao, Goa, I was aghast to hear that he was one of the proponents of an art that was gradually falling prey to the machinations of a 'reformation' that, while spelling entertainment all around, was sounding the death knell for the traditional form.

The way he regaled the full-house audience with his renditions of Kerala's more popular 'naadanpattu', it was difficult to believe that this genre of traditional art is literally gasping for breath due to the modern generation's indifference to anything 'ancient.'

'Nadanpattu' is a series of folk songs sung predominan...