Display of colourful umbrellas atop elephants at Thrissur Pooram
Panchavadyam in Malayalam means "five instruments". It is a form of ritual temple music that accompanies elephant parades during temple festivals and is performed by several musicians playing five different kinds of musical instruments. The music is played to wake the mother goddess so that the deity would bless the ensuing festivities. Four percussion instruments including the timila, maddalam, ilathalam and idakka, is accompanied by the soothing sound of the kombu, which is a wind instrument. The rhythmic beats of the music puts one into a trance as the music follows a binaural beat pattern. Binaural beat music is used by NLP therapists to put patients into a light trance before starting creative visualization exercises.