For those who sing and move us

When Rukmani Devi died, there was an outpouring of grief. People took to the streets, cried, sobbed, and lamented. Some didn’t even believe she had gone. Icons are like that I suppose, though that doesn’t mean those who sob and those who lament necessarily cut out those who left for posterity. There must be tributes, of some sort, to ensure that their legacy remains. Words and speeches are good, but without the necessary drive to turn them into reality it’s pointless to celebrate a life lived through. The same, I must say, goes out to all those who helped nurture the arts, not necessarily artistes themselves.

I believe there still are people in this country who are yet to come to terms with the passing away of Amaradeva. That’s natural. Stars are loved, icons are cherished. On the other hand I refuse to believe that his music is the only reason his passing away is lamented. He was much more than a musician, composer, and lyricist: the truth is that he stood for a country in peril, which underwent its most difficult years when he rose up. His work cut across to every community, caste, and creed. This is not a tribute to Amaradeva, though.

My friend Dhanuka Bandara (who writes with such vigour that it’s a pity he doesn’t write anymore) once observed that the disparities between Low Art and High Art could be explained by the lives of individual artistes. He had visited Kala Bavana and then visited the street painters outside who made it their mission to display what they drew to the general public. It was probably an irony that they’d chosen to display them in a road named after Ananda Coomaraswamy, who wrote on the dichotomy between High and Low Art many, many decades ago, but for the time being let’s forget that.

Here’s what Dhanuka said, quoting one such painter he had interviewed:

Art Street also brings to crisis arbitrary division between “High Art” and “Low Art”. Arya Kumarasinghe, another artist that I spoke with, described himself as a “peechan” artist. He drew an interesting analogy between the work of H. R. Jothipala and the work at the Art Street. Jothipala's music is hardly appreciated in the way the music of Khemadasa or Amaradeva is appreciated. However, the popularity of Jothipala's songs seems to endure. One could hardly find a Sri Lankan who has not heard a Jothipala song. I suppose “Peechan Art” is the best Sinhala term one could think of for "Kitsch Art" – art that is necessarily a rejection of high art.

Dhanuka was (consciously or otherwise) saying of Art what Pauline Kael, some decades earlier, had said of the cinema: that the gulf between artiness and kitsch in films was so pretentious, so ridiculous, that we were picking on kitsch for unfathomable reasons. Well, I am no fan of kitsch, but fact is that in our rush to praise artiness we’ve let go of the foremost purpose of a work of art: to reach out to as many people and audiences as possible without insulting their intelligence. Going by that, I suspect it would not be wrong to class H. R. Jothipala, whom Dhanuka aptly quoted, among those who were exponents of music for the multitude.

Jothipala had a voice. I don’t think everyone will agree that it was a musical voice, but the truth of the matter is that it entranced us nevertheless. He could sing of love and of other emotions so well that no two songs were the same, even if both were on the same theme. The secret to his popularity, as those who know music and those who don’t will tell you, was that he sang of our baser instincts, the instincts that made us the frail beings we were and are. He was probably not as much a national icon as others were, but that wouldn’t have bothered him. Not in the least.

Hettiarachchige Reginald Jothipala was born on February 12, 1936 to a fairly middle-class family in Matara. He was the first child in a family of four girls and one other boy. His parents were not musically inclined: his father was a tailor, his mother a nurse. They eventually moved to Colombo, where young Jothipala was sent to St Lawrence’s College in Maradana and later to St John’s College in Dematagoda. He never studied music. Perhaps he didn’t take to it academically.

Or perhaps he took to music in other ways. He loved to visit tea kiosks and listen to the radio (his family, it must be said, never owned one). At a time when the Rafis and Haroon Lanthras of this country were making their voices heard, Jothipala would have loved to get into the industry and carve a career for himself. And as with all such budding vocalists, he began that career at the place which baptised most of his contemporaries for years to come: Radio Ceylon, where he was taken in to sing duets with two of the most demanded playback singers at the time, Wasantha Sandanayake and G. S. B. Rani Perera.

His first shot at a solo was not successful. He tried to get into Sirisena Wimalaweera’s film Podi Putha as a playback vocalist, but for some reason the composer who scored the film didn’t think very highly of his voice. This was in 1956. That same year, Cyril B. Abeyratne’s Surathalee was being made and hence, they needed a voice. The producer of that film, Jabir A. Cader, wanted to assess Jothipala. Eventually, he made it.

His next big break came with Lester James Peries’ Sandeshaya, where he sang that most beloved of tributes to the conqueror, “Pruthugeesi Karaya.” I remember Lester once telling me that that particular song was so popular that copies were made (of it as well as the film) and eventually exhausted. From then on, Jothi became a household name, more often than not the darling of directors who wanted him to perform for all the leading actors and actresses that danced, crooned, ran around bushes, fell in love, and fought. It would of course be futile to try and list all his credits here, so I will desist from such an enterprise.

I will, however, comment. Some of those songs he performed were derided as imitative. They were pale replicas of Indian songs (among them, “Chandra Me Ra Paya Awa” and “Adare Hithanawa Dakkama”). Bandula Nanayakkarawasam once told me that the opening lines to that evergreen classic, “Jeevithe Kanthare” (jeevithaye kanthare / thurunu wiyali walle / uthura gala yayi adare), puzzled composers and writers in his day so much that diatribes aimed at their syntactic and grammatical flaws were published by the day. I have no doubt that some of these diatribes would have been aimed at Jothipala as well, for he was what he sang (it was probably for that reason that, as the years went by, he was called a “pavement singer”).

There are several Jothipala stories one comes across. Here’s one. Amaradeva is said to have asked the man to sing a song for a film he was scoring. Jothi hadn’t been approached by him before. Not knowing his methods and his way with other musicians perhaps, Jothi had simply replied: “Give me a day, I’ll come over, I’ll record once, and I’ll go.”

Amaradeva had got angry, apparently. I don’t know exactly what transpired between the two of them there, but from what I’ve heard he never spoke to nor came across Jothi until about 10 years later. Again, there was a film he was scoring, and someone had suggested his name. Giving him one more chance (we can assume), he had made his request again. The eager young man, predictably, gave the same reply. Amaradeva didn’t get angry this time.

He instead decided to try out this man’s claim (for in his experience, I am willing to bet, he hadn’t come across a vocalist who could record a song perfectly in one go). So he gave him a date and time for the recording.

What happened next surprised Amaradeva. True to his word, Jothi came over, recorded once, and left. The recording was perfect and, moreover, in tune with the sequence of the film. I don’t know what Amaradeva would have thought then, but I am sure he reflected on his previous encounter with the man with some humility. After all, he couldn’t have come across a vocalist like this before. In the meantime the song, “Kanden Kandata”, became popular, as did the film, Tharanga.

That was Jothipala. Didn’t pretend. Didn’t need to. He came and did what was asked. Just like that.

He sang for other composers too, among them Khemadasa (who purposely, in song after song, toned down his voice, the same thing he did with that other sought after vocalist, M. S. Fernando). He sang for other lyricists as well, prime among them Ajantha Ranasinghe and Karunaratne Abeysekara. He had his encounters and he faced them with an undying sense of humility. Time and time again, I have come across stories of how he would give away those gifts he was bestowed with by the public, how he wouldn’t refrain from helping a friend. Yes, that was a time when such things happened. That time, we will probably never see again.

In the meantime, he went on. His work proved so popular that he organised his own concert, "Jothi Rathriya", in the eighties. He was so much in demand that he’d sing far in excess of what he was paid for, in concert after concert. Naturally, people drew to him.

He received the Sarasavi Award for Best Playback Singer in 1982 and in 1985 and when Ranasinghe Premadasa launched his flagship project, “Gam Udawa”, he sang for that as well. It was at one "Gam Udawa" concert that he collapsed. On the 8th of July, 1987, at the rather premature age of 51, he left us.

His funeral, needless to say, was huge. People came and wept. Some proclaimed, “You are immortal!” They were correct. They still are. For the thing with Jothipala was that he blended in with whatever actor and whatever lyricist he sang for. In the end, those songs became his.

And when that happened, they became ours as well.

Written for: Daily News TOWN AND COUNTRY, November 9 2016

Sanchitha Wickremesooriya: Harvesting and reaping rhythm

I was not musical as a child. My only encounter with the subject was through Miss Helen, the prim, proper, no-nonsense music teacher who tried to get me into the choir at my school, Lyceum. She couldn’t (or to be more accurate, I didn’t let her). Music wasn’t my forte then and it’s safe to say that after all these years, I am (almost) as tone-deaf as I was as a child. That probably explains why I tend to look up to musicians, especially the more prodigious among them and especially as I realise that they are more endowed than I am with the ability to harvest the most universal art-form the world has ever known.

And when those musicians and music lovers happen to be young, I tend to look up to them even more.

Just the other day I met Sanchitha Wickremesooriya. He’s young, he bristles with energy, and he’s fired with a sort of enthusiasm I haven’t come across others his age. He needs no introduction, no real CV. He prefers to stay out of the limelight while courting fame, the kind of music lover who’s quietly harvesting what he’s done. For that reason, I “notice” him even more, and as I go through his life and the anecdotes that colour it, I can’t help but think, “Here’s someone to reckon with!”

Sanchitha has a background and comes from a family that contributed to the music industry of this country, but right at the beginning of the interview he brushes off all that as he recounts his story. He was, as I expected, musically inclined as a child. “My parents tell me that long before I learnt to talk and read and write, I’d go to a corner behind the cupboard and, well, sing and draw,” he chortles, “I started going for classes at the Mary Anne School of Vocal Music when I was four-and-a-half years old.”

He later joined the choir at his school (Royal College), which had not been your typical school choir. “We even indulged in pop music,” he remembers, adding that almost every teacher had encouraged his passion for the subject. “When you have so many teachers who inspired your later career, it’s hard to point at one name in particular.”

After he completed his A Levels (in Commerce), he was on tenterhooks, deciding eventually to join his family business and in possible, be a vocalist himself. His parents, however, had been adamant that he pursue his interests academically. “They didn’t push me to conventional subjects like Engineering or Medicine. However, they insisted that I should combine all what I’d done academically. In that sense their advice was sound, particularly when I left for the United States and landed at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.”

Berklee had been an eye-opener. “It was more or less a different world. The culture-shock was a little hard to adapt to. Not that I can’t adapt, but I’m not a big fan of changing myself to suit another way of life. That’s why the first three months there were challenging. Moreover, Berklee attracted the best and got the best: not every Tom, Dick, and Harry could enter it. I had to contend with that as well. Yes, I guess it was all existential, but soon enough I decided to fast-track my Degree and after completing it, return home.” Not that he dislikes the country: “I love the United States and its people, but I don’t think I’d want to live there.”

What of the Degree itself? “I originally wanted to be a performer. In fact for some time I did perform at Berklee, when I got together with some friends of mine and formed a band called ‘The Indian Ensemble.’ But when I realised the sacrifices that vocalists had to make, not in terms of money or capital but in terms of the moral and physical investment, I changed my mind. That’s why I went for a Degree which combined commerce and music: Music Business and Entrepreneurship.”

I ask him about what went into the Degree. “Well, it’s essentially what I learnt for A Level Commerce, only this time from the perspective of the music industry. So you’d study Economics and Accountancy in terms of, say, a record store. It was quite interesting, especially since I learnt how commerce and music could cohabit. I mean, think of it this way: there are factors that go into the music industry of a given country, not just demographics but ethnicity and religious bent as well. In the end, those factors help explain the success or failure of a single or album or performer.”

I confess that it’s difficult to unveil his perspectives on our music industry. For starters, Sanchitha argues that we can’t really claim an “industry” of our own. “The market here is dominated by a few powerful players. It’s monopolistic. Whoever goes up stays up and tries his level best to degrade newcomers. I am not saying that it was perfect world before my time, but back then things were more amenable to young blood. Everything’s cutthroat and competitive now.”

I put to him that these problems may all be economic, but he disagrees. “It’s futile to blame economics on every form of deterioration. There are other factors. For instance, why do aspiring vocalists want to make it big in the West? What does ‘make it big in the West’ mean anyway? Does it mean making the cut in the USA, in which case you are ignoring tons of other musical forms from Europe, or does it mean imitating what little you know from that part of the world?”

Not that he finds fault with those who harbour such ambitions. “In music as with life, there’s no one correct answer or solution. There’s nothing wrong in trying to hit it big in the West. The problem is one of motivation. Why would you want to do this? Can you or should you do that? More often than not, these up-and-coming artistes see the world in terms of the West, and have no desire to create something of their own in Sri Lanka. The most they would have heard from the US, for instance, would have been an Ariana Grande song, in which case they’ve merely scratched the surface.”

And in a way, that reflects the kind of songs one comes across here. According to Sanchitha there broadly are two trends musicians here go for today: stereotypical love songs that rip off the West and the more plebeian bus tunes. Again, he sees no reason for lament: “It’s all basically a choice. For me, a song’s primary aim is to put out there what’s in you. As long as you’ve achieved that, it doesn’t matter what you put out.”

He then goes on to add that in music, as with other art-forms, there’s little possibility of enforcing tastes on audiences. I tell him here that this truism of his can’t hold when it comes to propaganda.

He disagrees. “Propaganda is a strong word. For me, songs can only be forced on listeners if someone is holding a gun to their heads. Otherwise, they can always choose to shut them out even if they’re broadcast everywhere.” He also disagrees with those who differentiate between the aesthetic and the political in music. “I am opposed to those who say that songs should make you happy. Why must music appeal to only happiness? Aren’t we endowed with other emotions, which a song can provoke?”

All this offers much for reflection. I suspect Sanchitha wants to compel just that in us. He’s noticeably cheerful as we near the end of our interview. “I come from quite a quirky, unconventional family. We don’t look for monetary recompense with what we do and we certainly haven’t made money a primary motive. Sure, my grandfather Gerald, who founded the Sooriya record label, had a business acumen not many can claim. He brought music and commerce together in ways which entranced the ‘commoners’ and astounded the ‘elite’. That however doesn’t mean he compromised on artistry. We have much to learn from him, to be honest.”

He concludes with some rather prophetic words. “The States, regardless of whether one likes to live there or not, is amenable to those who experiment in music. I saw this for myself. Here you see someone experiment and think, ‘If we can’t do what he does, he is inferior to us.’ I suppose that’s as close-minded as you can get, but the sad truth is that that’s the kind of mentality you come across everywhere. We’ve conditioned ourselves to react prudishly to pop music and fusion and for that reason, it takes time for innovation to get rooted here.”

It’s all about passion and freeing oneself from the shackles of conformity, one can therefore infer. All about discovering self, going forward, and creating a precedent. Maybe it’s impossible to jot all that down in words, or for that matter one article. Maybe it’s time to stop reading and go for it. Just like that.

Written for: The Island YOUth, November 6 2016

Amaradeva: the Voice of the Nation for the Nation

His songs roll off the tongue easily, as though their lyrics were stuck in our throats and needed his melodies to be unleashed. They are addressed to us, the collective “we”, the entire country, in ways few singers have or ever will.

There must be a secret to this, and I don’t deny that, but the truth of the matter is that he has tapped into the collective unconscious of the nation remarkably well. Wherever he has been and whatever he has contributed has been etched across our minds forever. He is immortal, in whatever he has sung and whatever he has written.

He is Amaradeva.

I remember arguing once with a music lover over the “ultimate” aim of a song. He put to me that music (and indeed art) will be vindicated only when it runs parallel with the “truth”.

I asked him to elaborate on this. He obliged. Truth, he contended, was political and hence defied the “saundarya” (aesthetic) quality music is filled with. He argued that songs would “dig” into us only as long as they drifted away from what he called the “indifference of the aesthete.”

I begged to differ, needless to say. I told him that as long as songs made us reflect, and as long as songs which talked about political realities were aesthetically crafted, they would gain popular appeal. Otherwise, they would be so specific to the time and place they were made in that they would lose popularity as time passed. I brought up some singers. He brought up some singers. We argued, and heavily so.

Then we got to Amaradeva. The man quietened down rather quickly, and stopped arguing. I tried to bring him back to the debate, but he hemmed and hawed and left. No, I didn’t even have to go on to prove what I was saying. And yet, just like that, I won that day. How?

I wish I knew.

There are some songs which remain alive in our memory no matter what. There’s a reason for this, obviously. Perhaps they dig deep into the reserves of our minds in a way no political song ever can. And so, those who criticise them as being too indifferent, too aesthetically crafted, are not telling the whole story. They are partial. What they say and think, hence, cannot last. Not for long.

Amaradeva’s songs cut across any divide, real or imagined. They at once beckon what we secretly nurture in ourselves. “Sasara Wasana Thuru”, for example, reflects our collective wish to be born in this country, frail and fragile though it is, over and over again. It is our “pathuma”, our wish, that we are brought up on this soil and return to it even when our remains disappear. Yes, it’s a collective wish. The same kind of wish Amaradeva sings about in countless other songs, penned by him or by other illustrious lyricists, prime among them Mahagama Sekara.

It’s not just songs of course. The true worth of the man, I feel, is to be seen in how he has imbibed different styles and idioms to present a truly “Sri Lankan” music.

Take those films he has scored, for instance. I remember the first theme of his I listened to. It was from Gamperaliya. I remember the opening sequence of that film, the music tuned perfectly to a potter ambling his way along the Koggala coast. There came a point in that film when its theme took on a life of its own and exemplified a nostalgic attitude to the way of life it was portraying, something the critic Philip Cooray noted when he wrote just how dirge-like the score was.

There were other films, other scores. There was Delovak Athara, a world away from Gamperaliya in terms of mood, scored completely by a Western orchestra. Amaradeva’s theme for that film was unique and for its time, unsurpassable. In its orchestration, its mood and texture, I realised at once how eclectic, how flexible, the man was in his ability to weave together different musical traditions. This and nothing more accounted for my love for his music. And songs.

He didn’t do it all alone, by the way. There were songwriters, as I pointed out before. There were also filmmakers, whose vision he would perhaps absorb when scoring their works. I haven’t come across very many Sinhala films to identify what would constitute the best musical score, but Thunman Handiya came very close to it. There was that same nostalgia, that same bittersweet dirge, which went in line with the film’s story. I wasn’t surprised by the fact that Mahagama Sekara had directed it. Yes, Sekara. The “gee potha” (“book of verse”) to Amaradeva’s “mee vitha” (“glass of wine”).

I haven’t met him personally, however. Still, I have come to terms with the fact that one does not need to meet him to savour him. His attitude to music is at once recognisable in any of his songs. To him, and I’m pretty sure of this, music cannot be defined. It cannot be put down in words, as a novel or poem can, and it cannot be replaced by textbooks or academic treatises. He has written of how he has made communicating his innermost feelings through music his “jeevana pranidhana” (life mission). Nothing could be truer. I have heard the man more than I have read him. He is music exemplified. He doesn’t need a biographer. His voice and melodies are his life.

This isn’t all. At a time when trends change and change fast, his is the voice of sanity that prevails. I’ve talked with friends of all races, of all religions, be they Muslim, Tamil, or Burgher. They all love him. They have made it a point to sing one of his songs whenever chance permits, the most popular being “Ratna Deepa Janma Bhumi” (for some reason). They have all committed his lyrics to memory, probably more so than those of any other artist dead or alive. I can’t think of any other singer who has inspired my countrymen this much. Maybe Sunil Shantha, or even C. T. Fernando. I don’t know.

Each of his songs pithily embodies a human condition. “Nim Him Sewwa” speaks to the lover in us, hoping that one day she who is sought will return to us, forever. “Ran Dahadiya” is about the sweat and toil, the dignity, of the goviya who sustains us in a way we will never be able to pay back. “Sannaliyane” is about the inevitable vicissitudes faced by a weaver who weaves for the living and the dead. “Siripa Piyume” tunes in perfectly with the pilgrim’s progress to the Holy Peak of Samanalakanda (Adam’s Peak). They are timeless, true, but are also ingrained with a Sinhala Buddhist ethos which at once cuts across to every community in our land.

He’s much more than a singer or composer. I don’t need to write down his CV for you. It’s there for everyone to see. He was there when Queen Elizabeth wanted a national anthem for the Maldives. He was there in the Philippines when he was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay award. He was there, with his beloved wife adding to what he said and sang by his side, more than one month ago (October 2014), at the BMICH, performing for and with the Music Circle of Ananda College. He was there, everywhere. We saw him, and when we did, a kind of hush came over us. That hush I’m yet to see with another singer or artist, whether from here or elsewhere.

The truth is, and this I’m sure of, that he is a national force. He remains alive in us and in the memory of those who cherish him. If it’s about bringing together different communities, be it on either side of the racial or religious divide, no greater unifying force can be found. For he has touched what academic theses cannot, that timeless, space-less wish which resides in every human being: the wish to capture emotion and give it to the world (as he put it once) with no antipathies to any community. He is a communicator, a tool for harmony, and wherever he may be, he exudes that charm and humility which immediately draw us, whoever we are, to him.

He is Amaradeva. The Voice of the Nation, for the Nation. He turns 87 today. May we all put our hands together. May we all wish him: “Chiran Jayathu!”

This was published in the now defunct ESCAPE magazine on December 5, 2014. He had just turned 87 then. He would have been 89 next month.

On those who write on love for others to sing

Every budding poet, at some point in his or life, tries to level on love. Experience is their biggest trump card and if they lack experience, they try to make up for that through words.

The truth however is that there’s no guarantee that the experienced lover (jilted or requited) can be an experienced poet on romance, just as much as there’s no guarantee that the poet who writes on love though he or she hasn’t encountered it will turn out to be a dabbler. Keats, Shelley, and Mahagama Sekara wrote on the subject, after all, and none of them (they all died relatively young, let’s not forget) could be said to have indulged in what they wrote of considerably.

It’s a different matter when you write for others to sing, though. Sekara did that. He had Amaradeva. But Sekara was not alone. He lived at a time when people wrote on different themes and when lyricists didn’t stay fixated on one in particular for too long. Premakeerthi de Alwis, for instance, is reported to have written over 5,000 songs. Sunil Ariyaratne has written almost as much. They could have easily set themselves up on top of that forever insurmountable terrain called love and carved their careers there. They did not. Neither did Sekara.

And neither did Ajantha Ranasinghe, who like Premakeerthi, Ariyaratne, and their contemporaries was bequeathed to our literary and music fields after the revolt that transpired in 1956.

Ranasinghe came to us in the seventies and eighties, each decade special for different reasons: the seventies, because of the veritable stream of indigenous artistes who superseded and got rid of the foreign domination our performing arts industries had been subjected to until then, and the eighties because of the freedom granted to every budding artiste to come into those industries thanks to liberalised economic, cultural, and social policies.

True, the man was there before all that, but he came to the forefront when he began versifying for some vocalists and when he entered our cinema (both of which and whom blossomed in the transition from one decade to the other). In his own special way (and this is probably why I took to him) he turned love into verses, lines, and veritable wordplay. He wrote of love in so many ways that it was difficult to keep up. Perhaps that was meant to be, perhaps not. For the truth of the matter is, he entranced an entire generation.

Ajantha Ranasinghe was born in Thalammahara in the Kurunegala district. It was there that he received his first education, a point he drove home rather emphatically when I interviewed him about two years ago. “We revelled in the village. In fact you can say and assume that most of my songs owe their legitimacy and feel of life to what I encountered in my childhood,” he explained, adding quite cogently, “Only someone who has moved intimately with rural life could have written what I wrote.” Today’s generation, he observed, were not fortunate.

He was educated firstly at the Pannala Government School, again in Kurunegala. After some time his family decided to educate him in English, so they sent him to St John’s College in Nugegoda. Given the fidelity that artistes exhibit towards their schools, I naturally asked him to elaborate on how his education in Colombo helped.

To my surprise, he was not nostalgic. “Unlike in the game iskole, we didn’t come across our culture. I’m not finding fault with such schools, but you must remember that missionary establishments were there to spread their faith first and only then embrace our culture. Apart from the Sinhala and Literature periods, I didn’t encounter that culture in Nugegoda.” For that reason perhaps, after he completed his GCE Ordinary Levels, he left St John’s.

He did not idle, however. By the time he left school, he had established himself among a group of like-minded lovers of the arts, led by Sunanda Mahendra. They would all buy books together, read them, and critically appraise Sri Lankan and world literature. They would also meet every fortnight for various discussions. “We were interested in language, in culture, in literature, in religion, and not just what textbooks provided.” No doubt all these helped his later career, in particular owing to the link between the written word and the articulate lyric. That was what provoked him to comment: “We found time to dabble in fruitful conversations on the arts. You just don’t see that kind of interest among youngsters today.”

Stints at Radio Ceylon, where he joined the Lama Mandapaya program, and at Lake House, where he was not only a cub reporter and local news editor but also a short-story writer and lyricist, would follow. It was during this time that 1956 “happened” and spilt over: Ranasinghe would feel its impact almost immediately, in how aspiring artistes like himself were being perceived by his countrymen. Eventually, he found himself working under the formidable Karunaratne Abeysekara at the SLBC, where he met one of his most frequent collaborators, H. R. Jothipala.

Jothipala had heard of Ranasinghe through his sister. He had come to meet the man to make a request: “He wanted me to write the ‘world’s most beautiful lullaby’ for his newborn daughter. I asked him how. He gave no reply. Instead, he told me to meet and talk with Mohamed Sali, who was to direct me. I felt helpless at the time. It seemed impossible in every sense of that term.” Nevertheless, the challenge was accepted, and Ranasinghe came up with the lyrics for a lullaby. The song, “Mage Wasanavam”, marked the first time he and Jothipala got together.

From then on, every other song, dirge, and lament that Jothipala sang, Ranasinghe wrote.

We cherish them even today, as original and as transcribed melodies, which opened him to a torrent of composers: from Sarath Dassanayake to Premasiri Khemadasa. Khemadasa entered the cinema through the films of K. A. W. Perera, who paved the way for Ranasinghe to write on songs that were as cherished as the plots of those same films: who doesn’t remember “Mey Gee Eda” from Janaka saha Manju, or “Pokuru Pokuru Mal Sanakeli” from Wasana, or “Manamalai Manaharai” from Hingana Kolla? For these he wrote down a torrent of lyrics that were seeped in love and romance, the themes that Perera went for in his stories. No wonder we took to them. Anyone would.

Khemadasa in particular occupied a cherished spot in his memory. I doubt he had a favourite he could pick from the 50 plus songs he wrote for films, but if I were to pick, I would pick on “Mala Gira.” I didn’t mention this to him but I mentioned the song, and he lightened up at once. He reflected: “That reminds me of how much our childhood encounters shape our later careers, particularly in the arts. As I told you before, only a person who has gone through village life could have written the songs I have: lines like ‘gomara pethi male’ are not easy to come up with, but they were all there, in ‘Mala Gira’.”

He was, however, no pedant. “When we think of the Sinhala lyric we think of high-flown rhetoric. That is not always the case. You can’t remain fixated on the classics forever. You can’t be writing down ‘gal lena bindala / len dora arala’ all the time, and if you do, you will court the risk of alienating your audience.” Not that he absolved the practice of most modernists to discard the past altogether: “There must be a balance between fidelity to tradition and flexibility. I have come across so many instances where the composer or the vocalist or even I had to compromise on rigid linguistic rules for the sake of the melody.”

He believed strongly in the coexistence of quantity and quality in his field. In the case of most singers (and songwriters) today, however, and as a final point in our conversation, he contended that quantity had more or less superseded quality. “Name one really popular song from today,” he challenged me. Needless to say, I couldn’t. Earnestly, he went on: “Look at the singers we had then: Amaradeva, Victor, Latha, Jothipala. People still go after them. Why? Not just because they were popular in their time, or because they were giants, however true that may have been, but because no one is there now to continue from where they left off.”

He could have been talking about himself. When he died last February (suddenly and tragically), he left behind a void. Who’s there to fill that void? No one, we can contend. We will continue to think of him as we listen to what he wrote: we will croon “Suwada Danee” as we watch Kamal Addaraarachchi and Sangeetha Weeraratne courting each other in Saptha Kanya, “Sanda Pem Yahanen” as we watch the two lovers in Wasanthaye Dawasak steal away at night, and “Sili Sili Seethala Alle” (which to me represents a near-perfect fusion of romance and silliness in a Sinhala song) as we remember Raj Seneviratne featured in probably one of the first music videos produced in this country.

Yes, we will remember. And as we remember, we will regret.

Photo by Upul Devapriya

Written for: Daily News TOWN AND COUNTRY, November 2 2016

The country of the nobles

“I wonder why it is that the countries with the most nobles also have the most misery.” 
— Francis Bacon

“I’m a citizen of a world!” is a quote usually attributed to Diogenes of Sinope. Diogenes was a cosmopolitan. He was also a cynic. He made that remark at a time when his compatriots were identified in relation to the city-state they came from and their fidelity to Greece. History doesn’t tell us if people took to his idea at once, but history does tell us that his remark, no matter how unpopular it would have been at the time, gained a fresh lease of life as the centuries and decades wore on and nationalism (as I’ve pointed out in an earlier column) got vilified for reasons not always discernible to the average Joe.

People make assumptions. Assumptions can be verifiable. If they can’t, they in all likelihood they’re based on flawed premises and even more flawed extrapolations. These in turn are probably based on a heavily prejudiced view of the world and an even more biased reading of the political, which in a Goebbelsian manner gets repeated so much that they acquire the quality of truth. So it is, so it has been, and (I suspect) so it will be with the dichotomy between nationalism and cosmopolitanism, particularly when it comes to (s)electing our representatives.

About a month or so back I wrote on nationalism. I argued then that the biggest damage those scripting reconciliation here were doing was ignoring the nationalist factor. I still believe this to be true, not because I affirm the kind of values that rabble-rousers, in their quest to win votes, provoke but because of two reasons: one, the nationalists will always have their say (history is a good guide for this), and two, the more you suppress them, the more likely they will vent out their frustration resorting to unseemly, despicable methods. I could have mentioned then, as I did not, that the promotion of cosmopolitanism in our political, economic, and social spheres was doing as much damage as the suppression of nationalism.

And it’s not hard to see why. For centuries, the West was entranced by a form of cosmopolitanism it never really upheld. It preached the gospel of multiculturalism even as it ironically celebrated and affirmed the faith of the majority. There was racism but it was almost always paraded as assimilation. To this end I alluded to the (Lutheran) Constitution of the Norway and illustrated how, at the end of the day, the Constitutional situation in the West is such that rights guaranteed to ALL are IMMEDIATELY qualified by privileges attached to SOME (in ethnic and religious terms).

Personally, I think this is a joke. And you know what? It’s a tragedy that most of our self-proclaimed multiculturalists (not all, but many) don’t see that they are affirming a more nuanced version of what Diogenes said centuries ago even as those who finance and fund their attempts capitulate on the ideals they market for the sake of expedience. Let’s not forget, after all, that the ban on the burkini in France (which thankfully did not go through unquestioned) was allegedly made to equalise followers of every faith with each other, an argument that would have met with (justifiable) rebellion had it been made here.

Added to this is another point, as problematic and tragic as the above: we’ve been riddled with so many demagogues that we’ve literally been force-fed the myth that the only solution for the political wormhole in this country is (what else?) cosmopolitans and self-proclaimed political elites. I reflected on this a few weeks back (“Reflections on poverty and the political periphery”). No, I shan’t reflect on it again, but will add some more points which I feel we should take heed of. Starting with this: those who believe that the political cosmopolitan can best deal with political wormholes are only half-correct.

If there’s one thing we can take stock of when it comes to what transpired after January 2015, it’s this: popularity and cosmopolitanism cannot, and will not, coincide. The latter, moreover, will not ward out corruption for the simple reason that at the end of the day, the political elite are as “frail” (or “dangerous”), if not more so, than those who indulge in rhetoric. Sure, we’ll have Ministers and other (s)elected representatives congratulating themselves for achieving “durable” peace, reconciliation, and what-not, but all in all, they are little more than clueless lawmakers attempting to force their worldview on a country that remains alienated by what these representatives do.

Let’s be honest here. We’re entranced by certain attributes in politicians. We look for whether they are eloquent, whether they put individualism before sovereignty, and whether they can communicate well. We prefer the gentleman to the village thug even if, at the end of the day, both engage in the same kind of racketeering and wheeler-dealing that our government has gained an unseemly reputation for. We rubbish the thug, in other words, not so much on account of his (or her) underhand activities as on account of the fact that he (or she) is perceived as less cultured and refined that the so-called gentleman.

Let’s be brutally honest now. What did we see after January 2015? We saw rhetoric and heard words. Nice, shiny words. We saw politicians trying to beat each other at coming up with the rosiest chest-thumping poetry they could come up with. We saw promises that were made and not kept. We saw jokers on the loose, jokers caught unawares thanks to social media and jokers who, in a more politically enlightened state, would have been forced to resign or better, would have by resigned on their own accord. More than anything else however, we saw deception.

Those who support the status quo will continue to see in its leaders the nice, poetic statesmen they are not. Those who support the opposition will continue to question the status quo on account of its less than admirable stance on the values it itself espoused barely a year ago. Both sides have their idols and both will venerate them, though with a difference: while the populists operate on the premise that only rooted individuals will drive this country forward, the cosmopolitans on the other hand affirm the kind of beer-guzzling, clique-affirming, Colombo 7 mindset that (to put it pithily) did not, cannot, and will not take this country forward. In other words, the one operates on workable assumptions, the latter on unworkable fairytales.

I know, for instance, that those who deride key representatives (especially the leader) of the previous regime celebrate with equal vigour the visits made to this country made by “White Men” whose records are as abysmal as that of the village thugs on the issues of reconciliation and general decorum. And yet, they are welcomed and salaamed as though they are the statesmen they are not.

Yes, I know it’s simplistic to think that all this is just a sign of hypocrisy (after all we live in a world where Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize and Scott Morrison, present Treasurer of Australia, observed that had the United States achieved the kind of conflict-development goals we achieved after 2009, the leaders of that country would have been awarded the Prize), but still, it would be great if our self-proclaimed “Honest Abes” came out and called a spade a spade when dealing with the political.

It is fashionable to deride populists. It is fashionable to hold in esteem those who do not market their proximity to the people. True, in this the populists have been as guilty as the non-populists, because after all we’ve come across those who maintained a facade of friendliness to the public so as to woo some votes, but this dichotomy, I feel, has done more damage to this country than you can imagine.

What is wrong, after all, in appealing to and being friendly with the people, and what is right with maintaining a steely, ridiculously unfriendly attitude to them on the pretext that “I don’t woo them with lies because I don’t need to” if at the end of the day, the populist got some work done and the non-populist, despite rhetoric and his or her statesman-like image, got nothing done? Worse, what can be justifiable in that steeliness and unfriendliness if, at the end of the day, you win despite the most ridiculously alienating statements you make on the majority BECAUSE you are “blessed” with that “rare gift” called cosmopolitanism, which guarantees you a large chunk of votes from the elite in the city and elsewhere?

I am not naming names here, by the way. The truth is that since independence, we’ve gone back. We have voted for idealists and got in jokers. We have selected dreamers and have been accursed with them for the better part of not-so-distant past. It’s hard to pick and choose and vilify particular politicos because everyone, to some degree, is guilty and blemished.

In the final analysis, we are living in a country of nobles, whose nobility is predicated on the institutions they attended and the political ideals (fixated for the most on the middle-class and rightwing economics) they espouse. They win votes from the poor because the poor, as someone once said, never or hardly ever ask for an explanation of what they have to put up with. They may get tormented by taxes and corruption and they may get tortured by wielders of justice (formal or informal) while the bigger sharks go scot-free, but they like to dream. The political elite do not dream. They do. And each time they do, they dangle their bait a little farther away from the poor.

Chaminda Weerawardhana, who is domiciled in London and who calls a spade a spade, in an essay titled “On War Criminals and Privileged Holidaymakers” observed that those who stand for human rights and democracy and all other stuff populists love to demean as “Western trash” were, for the most, immature owing to their social and economic prejudices.

He contended (quite cogently) that they would trash the previous regime with the same enthusiasm they displayed when they invited the likes of Tony Blair and Cherie Blair (the privileged holidaymakers), the former an all-but-in-name-only war criminal and the latter noted for her law firm’s connection with Abdulla Yameen, who imprisoned Mohamed Nasheed in what Amnesty International referred to as a “travesty of justice.”

The irony, if you can spot it out, is that the government invited Tony to speak on “Reconciliation in Sri Lanka and the Northern Ireland Experience” and the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (yes, BASL!) invited Cherie to speak on “Human Rights in Business.” I was there at the latter event, I saw Cherie Blair speak, and I saw her spout rhetoric on the importance of maintaining decency in commerce and foreign relations. Weerawardhana questioned this and answered thus: “Why do Sri Lankan leaders, supposedly committed to the rule of law and good governance, court Blair? The answer partly lies in the Colombo elite’s blind admiration of all things Western and white.”

He then opened a bag: “The day the Colombo elite reach that level of maturity, beyond their neo-colonial, ‘Master-race-worshipping’ hangover, Sri Lanka could take real forward steps.”

Will they, though? I doubt it. As long as the status quo in this country is decided on by those aforementioned beer-guzzling clique-affirmers, the truth of the matter is that they can’t. The sooner we realise this, the better it will be for everyone.

Uditha Devapriya is a freelance writer who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com

Written for: Ceylon Today, November 1 2016