Memories

Looking back fondly: ‘Ho Gana Pokuna’

April 15, 2020 by admin

Ho Gana Pokuna, Uditha Devapriya

The ideology that pervades our movies is an ideology of commitment – secular, cosmopolitan, sometimes contrived, rarely felt – and they tend to constrict your vision. There’s an intense desire on the part of their directors to talk about social problems, to let us know that there are people out there who are suffering in want. It makes us want to cower before their vision, full of intentions but also full of a rift between those intentions and their production values. We want to do away with that rift, but the moment we try to we are lambasted as being escapist, fantasists, and tellers of fairy-tales. How can one be committed without resorting to explicit ideologies? It’s a tough call, but by extraordinary resolve some of our moviemakers have proved that one can be politically inclined without making his or her work a vassal to ideas. We already have a cinema of ideas. Now we want a cinema of life.

I saw Ho Gana Pokuna for the first time two years ago, in October, at the Savoy. The excitement on the faces of the child actors who were there, now grown up, was hard to ignore, and kept me expecting a great deal from it. I didn’t know the story behind it, nor of its cast and crew. All I knew was that Indika Ferdinando, whose play The Irresistible Rise of Mr Signno I saw before, had directed it. Depressed somewhat at the hardened, dichotomised world that directors his age tended to depict in film after film (awfully sincere, sincerely awful) I was, naturally enough I suppose, unconvinced of this one’s prospects. I sat down, therefore, with a sense of tepid anticipation.

Two hours later I got up forgetting I’d ever harboured such feelings. Ho Gana Pokuna then became, for me, the most exciting Sinhala film I’d seen in the last three years.

In Sri Lanka the gap between children’s movies and movies featuring children has blurred so much that no one cares to make this distinction anymore. This is to be expected in any film industry where neither the critics nor the general public are selective in their preferences (the public just want to be entertained, the critics just want to be provoked). The fact that it’s normal and to be expected, however, doesn’t mean that it’s not deplorable: our filmmakers use our children to spout out convenient posters and labels that belong to the political so much that those children become no more than instruments, messengers. Ho Gana Pokuna doesn’t resort to this device. It teaches us just how imaginative our directors could be if they didn’t use their subject-matter to depict their adulterated imaginings of them.

Writing to the Sunday Observer a few weeks after its release, Dilshan Boange contended that Indika’s left-of-centre political sympathies showed, somewhat discernibly, in the film. This is true. But the intrusion of the political in Ho Gana Pokuna is mercifully short: all we have is a bunch of NGO officials gifting an expensive but useless piano to the school as part of a project. The piano isn’t used; the children are instead taught by their rather irate principal (Lucien Bulathsinhala), who is also their only teacher, to fear it. It’s an object of ridicule which only the idealistic teacher, Miss Uma (Anasuya Subasinghe), resuscitates, which is why whatever political inclinations there are in the film come out through her. She is the political centre, and the periphery, of the narrative, since she represents the affirmation of ideology as well as the rejection of the labels that ideologues tend to harbour.

This is a novel message for a Sinhala movie. Elsewhere filmmakers have been telling us that we need to be more open, more proactive, and to shout and protest with labels and dichotomies that never work out in reality. What Ho Gana Pokuna lacks is explicit political force: even at its most forceful moments (as when Wasantha Muhandiram as the headman-like grama sevaka niladhari refuses to let the children and the teacher use the bus for their trip) Indika pulls back, not because he’s fearful but because he knows the experience he’s pasted over his film is too magical to face such moments. Even the verbal encounters between Miss Uma and the principal, when they decide (the former willingly, the latter begrudgingly) to inaugurate an Assembly outside the school for the students, are short (the principal’s contention is that by democratising the institution the children will grow up to rebel against becoming the farmers that their fathers are): we see them debate, her cheerful, him scornful, but there it ends.

The “committed critic” may well see in this a complete rejection of the political, a convenient erasure of reality by a saccharine-coated view of life, but this rakes up the question as to what the intentions of the artist should be. Our “committed directors” don’t lack courage. They have enough and more of it and they are brave. But the fatal contradiction at the heart of their conception of the cinema is their inability to resonate with popular audiences. If we have not gone beyond the eighties and the nineties (which nurtured Dharmasena Pathiraja and Dharmasiri Bandaranayake, the twin peaks of our political cultural sphere before Asoka Handagama entered the field) it’s because our film industry has bifurcated between the critics who conflate ideological profundity with aesthetic merit, the same conflation that our writers in the Sinhala theatre sustain, and the audiences who wish to see something richer in our halls. Compared with the fat politician played by Saumya Liyanage in Vidu, for instance, how much more believable are the villagers in Ho Gana Pokuna! The tragedy is that complexity is often taken as a sign of the uncommitted. The even bigger tragedy is that it is the lack of such complexity, through the one-dimensionality those other movies reflect, which we are supposed to watch and, what’s worse, enjoy.

It’s a view that certainly merits a second glance but it’s not the only view there is. The cinema thrives on plurality. Singleness, whether of intention or motive, isn’t usually very helpful, and eventually saps a film industry of its ability to fascinate. The recent spate of local films that can’t be categorised under that convenient artistic-commercialist divide our critics make is, I think, not a coincidence in that respect: from Ho Gana Pokuna right down to Adaraneeya Kathawak and Premaya Nam, there is an emotional resonance in them which easily wins audiences in a way that forced, unfelt political pamphlets and treatises cannot. No industry can flourish for long with practitioners who reject its commercial base, just as no industry can thrive with those who make money its only motive. Ho Gana Pokuna tells us, in its own special way, that there’s really no need to be a slave to those other movies. We are tired of the vision they spout because we know that the only alternative to them are the vigilante escapist flicks that our popular directors churn out, from Ranja to Wada Bari Tarzan.

Miss Uma, a transposed Julie Andrews/Maria von Trapp, and her children dominate the script because no one is a hero or villain in the village they inhabit: everyone cowers before them, wilfully. Whatever problems she and they face – whether in the form of the principal, the grama niladhari, or Justin, the bus driver who lacks a license – congeal gradually into their own solutions. In a way that lacks complexity, but when considering the alternatives – having her as a political ideologue or meandering to a set of happy-go-luck musical numbers – it’s more alive, more open, more textured. In contrast to many of those politically motivated films which are constricted, literally and metaphorically (many of them take place in tightly enclosed spaces, against a middle class milieu) Indika’s film hence has room to breathe, to move forward. You can’t blame people for becoming alert and alive to this kind of cinema because they want a work of art to keep them alert and alive. The political directors work from the premise that life is banal, following a depersonalised routine. (Handagama, in Age Asa Aga, has the husband, wife, and daughter follow the same setup every evening, again and again, to the point of tedium.)

Even as apolitical a director as Somaratne Dissanayake, in Siri Parakum, resorts to this banality, with entire sequences being repeated as if we didn’t get them the first time. What’s so interesting in the end about Ho Gana Pokuna is that it wilfully, delightfully does away with such tedium. There’s nothing really consistent in the plot. The children, along with their elders, always rake up something new for us; they even tide over an unlikely twist towards the end when Justin, the bus driver they all toiled and taught so as to procure a license, gets so carried away and drinks in exhilaration that he can’t drive the children to the beach.

At the movies we are repeatedly, though inadvertently, made aware that what we are seeing in front of us is a falsification of reality. Some directors get away with it, others don’t. When filmmakers embrace the political passionately, ambitiously, zealously, many of them, particularly the more recent ones, tend to sacrifice the real for the verbal. They will spell out each sequence elaborately for the audience hoping that the audience will agree with their outlook. Repetition of sequences, slipshod camera movements, jerky editing: these are the hallmarks of the political director, and he resorts to them as frequently as the commercial artist resorts to the needs of his clients by polishing up his output. Indika Ferdinando’s previous work, even as open-textured a play as Signno, bears out a political impulse. But in Ho Gana Pokuna, which as I mentioned at the beginning may well be the most exciting Sinhala film released in the last three years, the audiences are alive to what they are seeing. The movie no longer has to spell out everything to them believing them to be gullible idiots. The ending is, I think, a distillation of the entire plot in this respect: the teacher’s call for action over lofty ideals may well be a statement against the “serious” artist, who in his enthusiasm for ideas over execution prefers to explicate, rather than breathe.

Written for: Daily Mirror, November 30 2017

By – Uditha Devapriya

CLAUDE FERNANDO – a musical giant of his time

March 26, 2019 by admin

Back in the late 1970’s Vanderwert Place, Dehiwela was a quiet suburban residential neighbourhood. About half way down on the right side as one walked from the Galle Road, at number 22 if I remember right, was a small annexe which was a hive of musical activity. It was the Claude Fernando Music School.

A small reception area lead to a living room which was graced by a large, near indestructible, upright piano, a grand old instrument if there ever was one. It was in this cosy and welcoming setting that I was fortunate enough to learn to play popular songs of the day on the piano from one of the most wonderful of men one could aspire to meet in life.

Claude Fernando was one of a kind. Many of his peers in the music world that I have been lucky enough to meet in recent years have spoken with extreme affection in unison of the man he was and of his artistry on the electone organ. This instrument was new to Sri Lanka at the time and it is perhaps right to say that he lead the way. In the words of one of the most popular Sinhala vocalist-musicians of our times Claude “appeared to play not with ten fingers but twenty”! Many of his contemporaries from the 70’s Group Song era recall with enormous admiration the phenomenal skill Claude possessed at writing music scores. His ability to write the notation for compositions at lightning speed is legendary. I understand many a composer of the time relied on an ever-obliging Claude to write musical scores for them at recordings.

I myself was lucky enough to see him write musical scores while simply whistling the tune softly. In the back room of his little music school stood a large table with a number of thick, well-trodden manuscript books containing the notation for hundreds of songs both English and Sinhala. All the notation was hand-written by him; the introductions and interludes in red, choruses and verses in black. At each lesson one selected a song, copied the notation on to one’s manuscript book which was a work of art in itself with a distinctive sketch of a female head with flowing hair in red and black in one corner, and then sat with Claude at the piano to be taught how to play it.

The sheer beauty of the system he used in writing musical scores was that even the likes myself with only basic sight-reading skills could follow the thread and learn to play those songs. While what one played with the right hand was in conventional western notation, the base was written below the staff using English letters to signify the chord and dots placed in exactly the right spot to create the beat. Ofcourse watching Claude play the song to this notation was a major treat and a vital component of the lesson. One learnt fairly rapidly to close the book and play from memory simply trying to imitate the guru. How he got us to play the popular songs of that era on the piano despite our very basic theoretical musical knowledge and limited finger-skills was quite phenomenal.

It was during this time that I used to drop in at his Mendis Place home where he lived with his mother on some errand or to pick up the keys to the music school. I recall with extreme fondness how well Claude’s mom treated me and the mug of the most delicious cocoa drink which invariably followed.

Claude went out of his way many times to help nurture my interest in music by taking me along to some of the recordings at the recording studio at Bishop’s Palace down Kynsey Road. He played the treasured organ of that era at these recordings and I recall with immense gratitude how I was allowed to have a quiet play on this instrument when the musicians took a break.

The King Claude Show came into being in the early 1980’s. I recall with nostalgia how I had the privilege of taking part in the very first show. This televised concert went from strength to strength for some time and many who performed on the King Claude Show went on to make a name for themselves in the field of music in later years.

My association with this most humane of personalities was unfortunately relatively brief as higher education beckoned and beat music in to second place. However I have spent that last forty years playing songs by Abba and BoneyM, “Kandayam Gee” of the 70’s, instrumentals of that era, baila and many many others the way Claude Fernando taught me to play them. For the sheer joy this has brought me through a lifetime I owe him an eternal debt of gratitude.

May his soul rest in peace!

-Suraj Ranasinghe-

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The Nightingale Sings

August 15, 2018 by admin

Des Kelly, Desmond Kelly, Nightingale, Rukmani Devi

What a beautiful title, especially for this songbird of Ceylon, Rukmani Devi, born Daisy Rasammah Daniels, a proud combination of Tamil(Rasammah), Daniels(Burgher), & the Colombo-Chetty Christian tradition, on the 15th of January, 1923, in the Central Province Village of Ramboda, Nuwara Eliya.

She was the second child in a family of six, loved music and singing from a very early age, spending most of her time standing by the family gramaphone and singing along with the songs that emanated from it. The very first song that she sang, in the presence of (Master) Rupasinghe, her music teacher, I suppose, was titled “Siri Buddha-gaya Vihare”, a classical Sinhala-song, when she was just 13 years old. He, the master, had a keen eye for talent, and before her professional singing career was launched, it was decided that she took the name RUKMANI DEVI(meaning Rukmani, Goddess of song), this career “took off”, and, as she became an adult, she began to look more beautiful, with each passing year, paving the way to a “Movie” career as well.

It was by no means easy, but when you are blessed with both beauty & talent, as Rukmani was, the result was that she became the first “Star” to grace the silver-screen of Ceylon. She was also the first “Sinhala movie queen to be featured in a showbiz magazine called “Film-fare”

She then married Eddie Jayamanne, whose elder brother, B.A.W.Jayamanne was a film director who used his sister-in-law as the “main-lead” in many of his films. In addition to all this, Rukmani Devi was cast as “Mayavathi” in a stage drama produced by Charles Dias. What interested me here, was that Mayavathi was in fact, Juliet, from Shakespeare’s

“Romeo & Juliet”, only, this time, a beautiful Ceylonese one.

Rukmani Devi went on to doing everything she wanted to do, singing, recording, acting and becoming world-famous.

She achieved many things, in what was eventually a tragically short life. She died in a motor accident, on the 28th of October 1978, at 55 years of age. To me, Rukmani was easily one of the loveliest women of that era, in Ceylon, and in addition to her film & stage roles, her public appearances, where everyone who saw her, loved her, for who she was, to me, “the nightingale sings” and this one, will never be forgotten. This is my tribute to her on behalf of eLanka.

Desmond Kelly.
“Squire of Sooriya”

Lionel Ranwala Foundation leaves a footprint in Zhangjiajie

April 11, 2018 by admin

Folk Music, Lionel Ranwala, Malinda Seneviratne, Sahan Ranwala, Zhangjiajie, Lionel Ranwala Foundation

On the 8^th of September, 2011, a young Sri Lankan, a medical student studying in China, had visited Zhangjiajie. On his t-shirt was a Sri Lankan flag. It was not the first time he had worn this t-shirt in China but it was the first time it was noticed. In fact, wherever he went, there were people wanting to photograph him and be photographed with him. He did not understand for it had never happened before.

Then he met Sahan Ranwala.

Sahan Ranwala was in that city for a week, from September 10^th to the 16^th, attending an International Folk Music Festival. The troupe he led, that of the Lionel Ranwala Foundation, was one of 29 teams from 28 countries, not counting 21 Chinese groups that were participating.

All the teams had to perform twice a day for an entire week. Most had come ready with one or two programmes. The Sri Lankan troupe performed 15 different items. They had in fact stamped the Sri Lankan signature on the entire festival from day one, theirs being the best item of the opening ceremony.

Of the fifty groups, 6 were adjudged as the top performers. Sri Lanka’s flag fluttered proudly among these winners, the rest of the elite group comprising the United States of America, Russia, France, Georgia and South Africa.

Ten young people well versed in all aspect of Sri Lankan folk music stood out from the rest on account of their versatility. Sahan told The Nation that they were focused on expressing in their performances the amazing diversity of the Sinhala folk song. The audiences were treated to a fine mix of traditional music, with the troupe having put together pieces that were representative of the three main traditions, Udarata, Pahatharata and Sabaragamua. There had been nelum gayana, raban gayana and the songs associated with shanthikarma.

‘We received accolades from all quarters, but almost everyone praised our performances for being able to give the message of the lyrics in dance and music,’ Sahan said. He mentioned especially the ‘Vessanthara Velapuma’ which had moved many to tears. The explanation was simple: ‘The melody and performance would give them the idea of the item and they recognized that each item contained a central and profound concept with which they could identify’.

More than presenting new material at each performance, they were unique in that they were able to get the audience involved as well.

‘It was a very proud moment for us to see the Lion Flag among the flags of bigger and better known nations. We sang deshabhimanee gee (patriotic songs) all the way from the hall to the hotel. When we arrived in the city, no one knew us or about us; few indeed knew of Sri Lanka. By the time we were ready to leave, there was no country bigger than Sri Lanka.’

It was bound to happen, though. On the first night, i.e. after the opening ceremony, there had been a function. Everyone had brought their drums. Everyone played. After some time we tried out the traditional drums of our fellow participants from other countries. They were all surprised that the Sri Lankans could play their drums. All they did was to watch and then try their hand at these instruments they had never touched before. The Israeli troupe was made of all drummers. Their leader had tried to play the traditional Sinhala drums but hadn’t been able to demonstrate the kind of mastery that Sahan’s team had shown playing their (the Israeli) drums. Whatever dance they saw, they watched carefully and danced themselves. Needless to say they were noticed, applauded and highly appreciated.

Their versatility, freshness and unique ability to transcend language barriers and touch hearts of people from vastly different cultures had endeared the Ranwala Foundation troupe to everyone.

Sahan said that they did not expect anyone in Sri Lanka to have heard about their exploits and that they were pleasantly surprised when a special felicitation was organized for the troupe at the BMICH and when they also received a special award from the Buddhist Congress.

The troupe representing the Lionel Ranwala Foundation and the nation were sponsored by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs. Sahan expressed gratitude to the Minister of Cultural Affairs, Hon. T.B. Ekanayaka, the Secretary, Mr. Bimal Rubasinghe, the Director of Cultural Affairs, Mr. Vijith Kanugala and Prasanna Batiks who provided the costumes.

A few weeks ago, the citizens of Zhangjiajie did not know about Sri Lanka. Today, few would not know about Sri Lanka. That’s the secret of everyone wanting to take a picture with that random Sri Lankan medical student wearing a T-shirt with a Sri Lankan flag. The people of Zhangjiajie know the Lion Flag. They know the rhythms of Sri Lanka. They have heard the traditional drums. They have heard folk songs born in the Udarata, Pahatharata and Sabaragamuwa.

Maybe there’s a lot we can give the world. Maybe all it takes is to be ourselves. In all the glory, all the giving, all the erros and tragedies. If this country has a culture, it must have a rhythm. It’s good to know that we have something unique. Something that people of other cultures can related to, admire and applaud.

More power, therefore, to the Sahans of our land.

by MALINDA SENEVIRATNE

Kavi Alexander: a poet of sound

April 3, 2018 by admin

Grammy Award, Kavichandran Alexander, Malinda Seneviratne, Sooriya Music Village, Sooriya Village, Water Lily Acoustics

“The alchemy of the masters moving molecules of air,
we capture by moving particles of iron,
so that the poetry of the ancients will echo into the future.”

I’ve seen Kavi Alexander seated under the coccolaba tree at Sooriya Village, apparently one of the only two such trees in Sri Lanka, the other being at Peradeniya. With long hair and a longer beard, greying, Kavi looked quite ascetic. Except he’s wearing a t-shirt and shorts.

Sooriya Village attracts a lot of people who either in appearance or life are sadhu-like, so seeing Kavi seated there did not pique my curiosity, not even when he would stand up to greet people with hands clasped in the form of worship.

Udena Wickramasooriya had told me about him months before. I couldn’t remember what he told me. That’s because I am not into music the way Udena is. However, when Udena says ‘you must meet this guy’ about anyone, I make a mental note of it.

So Kavi Alexander was there. He had been there for more than a week. He even had a press conference which I was not too keen to attend. There are auspicious times for certain things and they can’t be forced, I firmly believe.

One auspicious morning, I said ‘hello’ to Kavi. He duly stood up and greeted me. And then we talked for what seemed like hours.

Kavi Alexander was born in 1949 and spent his early years in Ratmalana, Mt. Lavinia and Batticaloa. He attended St Thomas’ College, Mt Lavinia. Perhaps it was all there already in his genes for his mother played the Karnatic violin, but apart from that first memory Kavi distinctly remembers going to church with her and listening to the radio: ‘I was glued to Radio Ceylon; I wanted to put up antennas all over to improve reception.’

Improving reception or rather obtaining the best reproduction of sound turned out to be his lifelong passion, but he didn’t know it back then.

Kavi left Sri Lanka in 1968 and went to Paris. He was a hippie, he says. In Paris, he realized that his life would be in the arts. Perhaps in poetry or in sculpture or something else, he wasn’t quite sure.

‘I got an opportunity to play in the cast of the “Hair” production in Paris. As it turned out I was the only one who didn’t take the clothes off. I was very Asian in that way. I wore a traditional white Indian outfit. Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to France at the time, Tissa Wijeratne, came for one of the performances with his wife and complimented me on this. He said “Kavi, you are the only one who has not lost it!”’

‘Hair’ had been running for a year by the time he joined the cast. All the dressing rooms had been taken by that time but two musicians, one French and one American, had invited Kavi to share their dressing room.

Wherever he went he made friends, apparently. He moved again, this time to Brussels. Maybe he was restless but in all likelihood, he followed his heart. That’s what took him to ‘Mudra’ an experimental school run by the French choreographer Maurice Béjart. Béjart, the son of a French philosopher has spent some time in India where he had encountered Yoga and had been, in Kavi’s words, ‘flipped out by Bharata Natyam’ which had later inspired him to produce the ballet ‘Bhakthi’.

The six months he spent at Mudra was a life-changer for Kavi. He had turned up in jeans and believes that Béjart had probably felt that Kavi was passionate and deserved to be given a chance.

‘It was an amazing experience. This is where I learned that if one wants to succeed one has to have an iron will and be incredibly disciplined. The idea behind Mudra was that it was not just dance but everything associated with dance; lighting, make-up, carpentry, everything. The first lesson actually was yoga! Anyway, I found my purpose there. I wanted to start a record company. I wanted to record the music I love. And I decided that it had to be in the USA and no Europe.’

Interestingly, Kavi, while still a schoolboy had written to John F Kennedy, volunteering to be an astronaut.

‘The story got distorted of course. There are friends from that time who still tell me “you are the bugger who wrote to Kennedy and got a reply!” That’s not true. Kennedy never replied.’

Kavi set up his record company, Water Lily Acoustics, in 1984. Not surprisingly it was an uphill battle.

‘I was scraping by. The company was always undercapitalized. Maybe the turning point was when I went to Ustad Ali Akbar Khan in California. I went to his school and said I wanted to record his concert. He looked me up and down. He agreed. So the next day I went, set things up, and recorded. He wanted me to put it out. That was the first record. It was a gift, in fact. Now I could say ‘I recorded Ali Akbar Khan!’

Today Water Lily Acoustics is a Grammy Award winning record label and has recorded the great masters of both the West and East. Kavi is a purist, a perfectionist. He wanted and succeeded in capturing the music he loved in its purest form, especially the music of the Eastern world.

‘I realized that the great Eastern musicians had seldom been recorded properly, with care and attention on sound quality. The recordings that existed were of poor quality.

Kavi has to date recorded Indian greats such as Padmavibushan Ustad Dr. Ali Akbar Khan, Padmabushan Professor V.G. Jog, Padmavibushan Pandit Jesraj, Padmabushan Dr. N. Ramani, Ustad Imrat Khan, Ustad Zia Fariddudin Dagar, Padmashri Dr. L Subramaniam, Padmashri V. M. Bhatt, Padmashri Kadri Gopalnath, Padmashri Ustad Rashid Khan, Chitravina N. Ravikiran, Swapan Chaudhuri, Guruvayur Dorai and T. H. Subashchandran. He’s also recorded the younger artists, for example Dr. V. Balaji, Pandit Ronu Majumdar, Sukhvinder Singh Namdari, Abhijit Banerjee, Druba Ghosh, J.G.R. Krishnan, Thiagarajan Ramani, Shweta Jhaveri, Viji Krishnan and Sangeetha Shankar.

He has also recorded South American, Asian and African musicians, symphony orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Saint Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, and the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, in addition to prominent North American and European musicians, many of whom are multiple Grammy Award winners.

Music from recordings released by Water Lily Acoustics have been featured in the sound tracks of six major Hollywood films: Dead Man Walking, Two Days in the Valley, Primary Colors, Angel Eyes, One Hour Photo and Meet the Fockers, and also the Bon Jovi documentary ‘The Circle.’

He has also paired musicians from diverse cultures, and the very first to pair and record Indian musicians of both the Karnatic and Hindustani schools with their Persian, Arab and Chinese counterparts, a trend copied by others much later.

Kavi, for all his success, has pretty much the persona one is likely to assume when seeing him for the first time, seated under a tree, minding his own business, but quick to get on his feet and greet with hands clasped to whoever says ‘hello’ to him.

‘I live a hermit’s life. I live in the USA but I didn’t know about 9/11 until two weeks later.’

He’s been away for decades but he’s still very much rooted in Sri Lanka.

‘I eat red rice imported from Sri Lanka, so I get all the minerals from my country.’

And yet, there’s one dream that remains unfulfilled, he says. Kavi has for years wanted to record pirith.

‘Manik Sandrasagara came up with the idea around 2005. This was during the war. We corresponded. Manik told me that it was all insane. He felt that as a Tamil and the first Sri Lankan to win a Grammy, if I recorded the Buddhist chants it would have some impact. I had already recorded Quranic recitations and wanted to go to Ethiopia to record the Coptic liturgical chants. I found sense in what Manik said. I knew about the different Nikayas, but wanted to bring them together in some way, record them all, put the records together in a single box with four compartments. Something like that. CD’s, booklets.’

It never happened. Official sanction was hard to get. Kavi realized that it was a minefield and that one needed to be a politician to get things done. Manik died. Kavi gave up.

Kavi has been in Sri Lanka for almost a month now. He stays at Sooriya Village, upon Udena’s invitation. He conducts workshops, talks about music and recording, traveling once to Batticaloa which is due to circumstances his ‘ancestral place.’

My parents were from Jaffna. They came to Trincomalee by sailboat. It had taken them three weeks. Then they took a bullock cart to Batticaloa. Unfortunately they both died in the cyclone of 1978. Batticaloa is beautiful. I love the place. I visited my parents’ grave.’

He’s happy being here, this hermit who travels the world looking for great music which he can record for posterity, this sound-man who ironically is as much about silence as he is about music, this archivist of musical alchemy. He’s all about love, a different kind of love one might say.

Water Lily Acoustics has a website and the home page has a verse from Rumi which says a lot about the idea, the work and the man. It’s an appropriate ‘end point’ to this piece about this timeless man.

Love is that which never sleeps,
nor even rests, nor stays
for long with those that do.
Love is language
that cannot be said,
or heard.

by Malinda Seneviratne

A FIREFLY AT REST | Milroy De Silva

February 1, 2018 by admin

Desmond Kelly, Milroy de Silva, The Fireflies

He led “The Fireflies” band in Ceylon from 1963, a personal friend of mine, Milroy de Silva has passed on, in Vancouver, Canada, after a long illness, leaving family, friends & fans, deeply saddened by his death, at the age of 84. Milroy was indeed, a superb guitarist, self-taught, as most of us were in the good old days.

I remember the time when he lived in Davidson Road, Bambalapitiya, practically right behind our little tenement home in Lorensz Road, and this is where I first heard a “special-style” of acoustic guitar playing which left me spell-bound with the skill & expertise he displayed. A “latin-rhythm strum”that was as individualistic as the man himself, to be quite honest about it, I have never seen a “strum” like it. In addition, Milroy was a superb “lead-guitarist” as well. At the time, during the early 50’s Arthur “Guitar-Bogey” Smith played “Guitar-Bogey” just as well as Milroy de Silva. Note for note/chord for chord, there was no difference whatsoever. I would go to Milroy’s , sit there with him, watching those hands, playing his music, in absolute fascination. It was all acoustic “stuff” then. Electric guitars would be imported by “Harmonics” & Papa Menizies later, but Milroy & “yours truly” decided to manufacture our own amplifier in order to increase the sound of his “acoustic”.

We managed to find a couple of old “pakis-petti”, Melroy used his electronic ability, he had two old “speakers” from an ancient radio-gram and together, we produced the very first, not too handsome looking “amplifier” that Lorensz Road had seen. Melroy then took his acoustic guitar to Papa Menizies & Papa, always wanting to help people, put in the “finishing touch” to Milroy’s old acoustic, turning it into what was possibly the first electric/acoustic in Bambalapitiya. Milroy loved that guitar & not too much later his number one “fan” was going to use this same treasured instrument, to join a Circus Group that would be touring the Country for Donavan Andree. This was later though, but first,

There used to be a famous “girls’ school” named after some bloke by the exalted name of “Lindsay”. This was a Christian School where the “Head-Mistress” suddenly decided to run a Thursday afternoon “special” programme called the “Band of Hope” which would consist of around two hours of “Religous-Teachings” to the girl-students, some of whom had no hope at all, but were welcome there anyway. After the Band of Hope, the girls would be permitted to encourage any talented entertainers they knew to entertain them with music before they left for the evening to go home. There were several pianists, piano-accordian, & even a “mouth-organist” or two, known to various lasses at this School, to provide the said entertainment. Now & then, there would be a “vacant” Thursday afternoon, but Milroy de Silva & Desmond Kelly needed no encouragement to fill the vacancy. Milroy, with his guitar & Desmond with his Ukelele

would happily go down there, sing to, and entertain the girls, who, like any normal females of the time enjoyed being entertained. We had nearly all of the Lindsay Girls’ School lasses around us for the afternoon requesting their favourite songs and Milroy & Des enjoyed the attention they were getting, but had to sneak “out”, over the rear wall of the School, guitar, uke, & all to escape some of the boy-friends of some girls, waiting impatiently outside the front gate, to give these two imposters an unmerciful thrashing for taking up “their girls’ time”.

It was also here, where Milroy de Silva met a girl named Celonia and asked Desmond Kelly to write him a song dedicated to her. Desmond wrote it, titled “Celonia” of course, and Milroy loved it. He sang it to her, but eventually married a very pretty girl named Carmen. Desmond dated another very pretty girl named “Aloma”, but also ended up with another beauty (from another School) named Cynthia.

Milroy de Silva & Desmond Kelly were always very good friends. Then in 1952, Desmond Kelly was afforded the chance of joining this English Circus group to tour Ceylon with them. He had to audition for them before he got the job. However, the Circus Owner needed a guitar-playing singer on-stage, so what to do, men?, Desmond Kelly then borrowed that same old guitar from Melroy, for the weekend, taught himself to play the two extra “strings” involved, passed the audition and got the job. Milroy carried on in Colombo. He was already a very popular entertainer and found himself working, in the showbiz- industry egularly. There was hardly a large hotel or nightclub in Ceylon at the time, that we didn’t work for.

Unfortunately, I lost touch with him after our Circus show named The Continental Non-stop Revue ended, i joined the Royal Ceylon Navy, getting out in 1962 to migrate to Melbourne.

In the meantime, Milroy, still doing what he loved, formed his own band and called them his “Fire-flies”. He was indeed a superb musician, still, someone to whom many upcoming musicians went to, for advice, freely given. He was also an ardent fan of the old Country & Western icon Montana Slim,

singing and playing in the old style to the delight of hundreds of fans, wherever he performed.

He eventually left “Our Lovely Island Home”, like so many of us, to settle in Vancouver Canada. Here he was affectionately known as “Guitar John”, entertained, as we music-lovers do, until it becomes physically impossible to do so, and has finally “passed on” to continue singing and playing his guitar for the angels in heaven . A “personal” apology from me to you, Milroy, is that, although I did my very best to keep in touch with you, latterly, it became impossible to telephone you because you were frequently unavailable, in hospital, or just not home. No excuses on my part, but after coming to Australia, trying to do two & even three jobs at a time, working “shifts, 24/7, although I would have loved to have come to Canada, just to join your band and play the music we both loved, it was only wishful thinking on my part. Rest easy now, my friend. We had some great times together but now let me ask God to bless you & keep you, my sincere condolences to your entire family and this, my dedication to you, Milroy de Silva will show you that “Music & Memories” always go hand in hand.

Your pal, always,
Desmond Kelly.
“Squire of Sooriya”

A fine lead Guitarist of yesteryear

January 8, 2018 by admin

Anton Goonetilake, Dilhani, Gerald Wickremesooriya, Peter, Peter Ranasinghe

Little more than two weeks ago during the busy Christmas season, I got a very sudden and rare opportunity of meeting a person whom I wanted to see and meet in person for quite a long time, who was on a very short holiday to his motherland and when visiting a relative over here in the hill capital of Kandy..

A fine lead Guitarist of yesteryear but not known to most of the present day generation over here on FB, Even musicians, But quite well known among senior musicians and other senior citizens over here. Maybe some may remember him as the lead Guitarist of the mid to late 80’s band Jade but Not many will know he was the main lead Guitarist for the studio recording of the famous 4 song Sooriya album Dilhani..

An EP album which which is a landmark in the vinyl or record industry of Sri Lanka.

An album produced by Mr.Gerald Wickremesooriya on his own Sooriya label that still holds the record for the highest amount of sales of an EP record in Sri Lanka

The album which contained the very first song in the Island where harmonizing was superimposed or overdubbed by the same lead singer by Sri Lanka’s legendary recording engineer the late Mr.Mervyn Rodrigo. (This was actually an experiment but results proved to be very good! and was subsequently added to many more recordings)

A song totally created by a person considered the God father of Singhalese Pop in Sri Lanka ,the late Mr.Clarence Wijewardane for the two week old little daughter of the manger of his first band,The Moonstones, Mr.Sri Sangabo Corea .

The “Person” is, Non other than Mr.Anton Goonetilleke. And as I mentioned earlier, Not known to many but he is the man, who was just 19 at the time way back in 1969 who played this beautiful opening mid and ending Electric Guitar riffs for the studio recording of the evergreen hit Dilhani sung by Indrani Pererabacked by the Moonstones. But Anton was not a permanent member of the Moonstones and had left by the time photographs were snapped for the cover of the EP and sadly as a result did not appear on the cover picture with the rest of the Moonstones. However, Mr.Gerald Wickremesooriya, The big man and proprietor of the record company had seen to his own eyes and heard to his own ears the performance of Anton Goonetilleke and had insisted that at least his name should appear on the flip side of the cover and so it was!

The studio recording was done during the morning hours of the 17th of May 1969 at Sarasavi Recording studio, Dalugama Kelaniya on twin track Monaural and in just two (2) takes after many weeks of practice by the boys & girl.

Enjoy this little part of the opening,Middle and ending Electric lead Guitar riffs combined together along with the first verse of the track which I have edited down to 1 minute and 4 seconds from the full song of 3 minutes and 4 seconds.

A melody for a milieu: From Hubert to Clarence

December 29, 2017 by admin

Uditha Devapriya, W. D. Amaradeva

As an art form, as a means of self-expression and articulation, music is largely self-referential. It has nothing outside itself: the standards and the yardsticks created for it, by various exogenous factors, are subsumed, sometimes eventually, almost always at once. This is why of all the art forms we are acquainted with now, music is the least easy, and the most difficult, to propagandize. The moving image and the live theater thrive on the mediation of two levels of consciousness: that of the performer and that of the spectator. As such it’s easy and despicably so to elevate those levels of consciousness by resorting to a message, whether that act of elevation debases rather than elevates the art itself being a topic for another debate. Music, in any case, is purely a product of its milieu, the milieu that manufactures and then consumes it. The act of consumption, in other words, is no different to the act of production: there can be no mediation between the two, only a levelling down of any and every barrier.

Part of the reason for this, of course, is the comparatively frugal economic base that can sustain a song or for that matter an orchestral performance. The movies will always remain the most industrial of all art forms, reliant on technology in ways that no other art form can hope to match, but the advent of digitalisation and web helped liberate music from the opera house and the concert hall in much the same way that the blogosphere and YouTube helped disseminate criticism and the moving image. And yet, even before this advent of digitalisation, the frugality entailed in enjoying a song was very much apparent, because the act of consumption does not involve an explicit cost (especially if you are listening to a song with the rest of the country, over the radio) and because it reaches its audiences quickly. This is the same with respect to operas and symphonies, which have frequently been played over the radio as well. The dichotomy between production and consumption that you come across in the cinema, television, and of course literature is simply not there in the realm of music.

And because such a dichotomy does not exist, the milieu to which the producer – the vocalist, the lyricist, and the composer – belongs is roughly also the milieu to which the audience, despite any personal quirks individual members may have, belongs as well. The 20th and 21st centuries, with its differentiation between production houses and opera houses, with its democratisation of an entire art, helped sharpen this unique quality, which is how in Sri Lanka you can trace the evolution from the high-flown, high-strung rhetoric of the old composers – who derived their inspiration from the Parsee theatre and a mishmash of Hela Sinhala and several Indian languages, in their songs and musical pieces – to the Pop quality, low key to some, of Neville Fernando, Clarence Wijewardena, and closer to our time, Bathiya and Santhush and Sanuka Wickramasinghe. It is this latter pop sensibility that I wish to explore in some detail here, because in their milieu we see an interesting phenomenon being played out.

The transformation of our cultural sphere, from a largely esoteric affair reserved for the colonial elite to the more plebeian catalogue of art forms (cinema, theatre, literature, etc) after 1956, and the revolution it wrought, went hand in hand with an explicit need to liberate those art forms from the straitjacket of verbal and visual profundities (which were really, at the end of the day, shallow and hollow) indulged by, inter alia, the plays of John de Silva and Sirisena Wimalaweera, the novels of Piyadasa Sirisena and W. A. de Silva, and the cinema of the Minerva Players. Kadawunu Poronduwa begins with a tableau which culminates with the death of the main character Ranjani’s (Rukmani Devi) father: this tableau, in which the individual characters are identified with reference to their race and social position, reflected the verbosities that our filmmakers, playwrights, and writers in general liked to go for. It is with W. D. Amaradeva that we see a much needed toning down of those verbosities, with his attempts at linking the literary with the romantic through his sarala gee canon.

In a retrospective review of Rekava and Maname, written for the Lanka Guardian in 1982, Regi Siriwardena, our foremost critic writing in English, contended that contrary to the belief held at the time, Sarachchandra’s plays (especially Maname) initially appealed, not to the poor, but to a class that had been left out (absented) by every government until then: the middle class Sinhala speaking bourgeoisie. This was not really a bourgeoisie, rather a petit bourgeoisie aspiring to be the bourgeoisie, who would patronise the moral exhortations, at times chauvinistic, at times explicitly archaic, echoed in not just Sarachchandra’s early plays but also the work of the Colombo Poets and the moralistic yet romantic films of L. S. Ramachandran (Deiyange Rate, Kurulubedda, Sikuru Tharuwa). Eventually this petit bourgeoisie, alluded to as a distinct social subset by Ajith Samaranayake in a tribute to Camillus Perera, congealed into a class who called the shots in our cultural spheres. Amaradeva was their icon, their manifest destiny.

Amaradeva was the peak and the grand culmination of a trend that began with Devar Surya Sena, whose attempts at compounding our traditional sivpada and pal kavi with the grandiosity of the opera and the Church service were criticised as imitative by Sarachchandra and warmly reflected on by Tissa Abeysekara (indicating the manifest differences of opinion Sena’s work compelled and continues to compel today). Those who laid the groundwork for the later masters – including Hubert Rajapakse, whose eloquent recitation of Danno Budunge, misconceived as a Buddhist song by our nationalists, would find its pivot decades later with Kishani Jayasinghe (only this time provoking, not infatuation, but hatred) – were not fully aware of what they were doing. They were enthralled by the cosmetics of the culture they had shirked during their childhoods – listen to Rajapakse and Sena today, their peculiar accents, their carefully calculated inflections, and discern how far away from the pal kavi they were – but what they lacked they made up for by their fervent devotion to that same culture.

From these two masters we come to Ananda Samarakoon and Sunil Shantha. Rajapakse and Sena were scions of the Anglican elite, who reflected a sensibility different to the more vernacular community from which the latter two hailed. Shantha in particular, who extensively resorted to the piano and organ (a staple of the Catholic Church) in his work (including his tribute to Munidasa, “Kumarathungunge”), did not have a polished voice that could reckon with the past masters, and neither did Samarakoon, but they were truly, deeply connected with the Buddhist ethos which they went to in some form or the other (Samarakoon converted to Buddhism, while Shantha, a fervent Catholic, in his later phase pared down his melodies to invoke the unmusical intonations of the Buddhist faith, particularly with “Po Da Daham Sihile”). The shift from the Anglican elite to the Catholic poor was essential at this juncture because it opened up a crevice that would be filled, after 1956, by the baila and the calypso singer: from Neville Fernando (“Gayana Gayum”) to Paul Fernando (“Golu Hadawatha Vivara Karanna”). Amaradeva was a product of all these.

At the heart of the baila and calypso that preceded Amaradeva was a contradiction, particularly with the two foremost second generation singers, M. S. Fernando and Anton Jones. Their lyrics, which are for the most devoted to their own workings and rhythms and nonsensical shades of meaning, articulate a dichotomy between a life of luxury and ease and enjoyment and the lack of any money or financial security which was needed to maintain such a life. In many of these second generation baila songs – “Manike Mama Aye Gedara Enawa” and “Mama Enne Dubai Rate Indala” by M. S., “Mini Gavuma” and “Kanthoruwa” by Anton – this self-contradiction is very much pervasive, and it accounted for their tepid reception by the public, particularly the middle class (who didn’t want to reminded, as Fernando and Jones did, that the lives they hankered after were cut off from their economic realities). The transition from them to Clarence Wijewardena was, hence, significant and to an extent inevitable.

Clarence pandered to the milieu which, while shirking the proletarian (if one can use that term) and self-indulgent ethic of the second generation baila vocalists, enthralled the milieu which produced them (the petit bourgeoisie, the middle class, the thuppahi) by bringing about a fusion between their low key sensibilities and the sensibility that thrived on a more literary, witty, and meaningful conception of music. For it to work, and for it to ensnare the consumerist, hedonistic middle class (Buddhist or Catholic, located predominantly in the metropolis), however, the songs that Clarence put out had to subsist on a class rift between the householder and the servant. It is this rift, which you come across in “Mango Kalu Nande” and “Mame Ape Kalu Mame”, which earned Clarence, the Moonstones, and the Super Golden Chimes their place in the sun. They were poking fun at a way of life they had got out of, a way of life Anton Jones celebrated, a way of life they attributed to their helpers, their maids, their aayas.

In the end, therefore, by parodying them, he parodied the men and women we wanted to be. This curious paradox – between our affections for and repudiation of them – became its own standard, its own yardstick. And our own standard, our own yardstick.

Written for: Daily Mirror, December 28 2017

By Uditha Devapriya