As the curtain goes up on the 62nd Kerala State School Arts Festival in Kollam on Thursday, districts and schools in Malabar are poised to put up a sterling performance.
Malabar districts have been the favourites for the past several years. They have been the champions most times. As many as 34 times did they lift the championship in the 61 years of the Kerala School Kalolsavam. Interestingly, Kozhikode district has won the championship 21 times, a record.
But the dominance of Malabar districts remains a phenomenon that began in the 1990s. Until then, southern districts, particularly Thiruvananthapuram, had remained formidable. Although Thiruvananthapuram had lifted the championship 17 times, the State’s capital district could never lay its hands on the prestigious gold cup after 1989.
In the past 24 years, of which the pandemic deprived two years of festivities in 2021 and 2022, the championship went out of Malabar only once. Since Ernakulam became the champions in 2003, no district from central or southern Kerala has been able to lift the championship. Malabar retained the gold cup in the last 18 editions of the festival, with Kozhikode being champions 14 times and sharing the championship with Palakkad once. Palakkad won championship three times since 2003.
The juggernaut of Thiruvananthapuram district between 1976 and 1989 remains a thing of the past and a matter of academic interest to study. According to education watchers in the State, the end of Thiruvananthapuram’s winning streak and the beginning of Malabar’s juggernaut was a result of a shift in focus on competitive studies.
The cut-throat academic competition and career thrust developed by schools in southern and central districts from early 1990s heralded the visible change in the Kerala School Kalolsavam.
Manambur Rajanbabu, Malayalam poet who shifted his base from his native Thiruvananthapuram to Malappuram decades ago, said that participation of students in art, culture and sports events had suffered a jolt in southern and central districts when parents started to push their children to private tuitions with eye on competitive exams. A poet who judged the Kalolsavam for many years, Mr. Rajanbabu said the change in focus was palpable in the past two decades.
Malabar’s passion towards arts, particularly some community related arts, has been said to be another reason for the dominance of Malabar districts. Some arts experts claim that students from Malabar find better rhythm in events such as poorakkali, vattappattu, oppana, duffmuttu, kolkali, mapilapattu, and parichamuttukali.
No other school in the State puts in so much effort and resources to mould their students for the festival as Silver Hills Higher Secondary School, Kozhikode, and BSS Gurukulam Higher Secondary School, Alathur, Palakkad. Naturally, these two schools remain the biggest contributors towards the points for their respective districts.
Both these schools begin the preparation for the school festival even before the start of the academic year. They identify talents during the summer vacation and hire the best art teachers to train the students.
