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Amaradeva(Pic by Sandra Mack)

Amaradeva: a name for everything that is our little island

November 7, 2017 by admin
Classical, Malinda Seneviratne, W. D. Amaradeva

There are rain clouds, not too dark and not threatening.  It might rain later.  There was rain last night.  Tomorrow, there will be other clouds of similar shade.  Non-threatening for a while.  There might be rain.  The city pulsated in rhythms acquired over the years.  In some village in the Dry Zone, there are children at play.  The potter is at his wheel.  Someone, somewhere is listening to music.  The country called Sri Lanka in determination and resilience, hope and foreboding, meanders through the hills and vales of joy and sorrow at a pace that suits her people.  Sounds of yesterday are heard now and will be heard tomorrow.  And through it all a silence that is strangely also a song.  A sad song.  Amaradeva is no more

Pundit W.D. Amaradeva, known in an earlier avatar as Wannakuwatta Waduge Don Albert Perera, born in Moratuwa on the fifth day of December in the year 1927. Don Girinoris Perera and Maggie Veslina Mendis may never have imagined that their sixth and youngest child would, almost 89 years later, make music so silent and so poignant that it matched and in many ways surpassed everything he did with voice. Amaradeva breathed his last a few hours ago.  The nation skipped a heartbeat.  Breaths drawn were held for a moment longer than usual and then released as a collective sigh.

How can one speak of an incomparable voice that will not sing again? What do we say of a man who left us speechless with his songs? Those who want appropriate words to articulate their respective sorrows, their gratitude and sense of loss can of course delve into the lyrics. Song titles alone would yield enough lines to pick from. But that’s not him. That’s his friends, as gifted with word as he was with voice: Mahagama Sekera, Madawala S Ratnayake, Dalton Alwis, Chandraratne Manawasinghe, Ajantha Ranasinghe, Arisen Ahubudu, K.D.K. Dharmawardena, all of whom have passed on as has Prof Nandadasa Kodagoda (one of several one-lyric contributors), and among the living the highly accomplished but most infrequently recognized Sunil Sarath Perera, not forgetting Ratna Sri Wijesinghe and the more ‘present’ Prof Sunil Ariyaratne.

He will no doubt be remembered for offering his amazing voice to equally amazing lyrics, but what singles him out will always be the voice.  And as he often said, the music was only carried by the voice — it was born and nurtured in heart and mind.  Every word, every syllable and the spaces between were heart-made and mind-nurtured and that what sets him apart.  His heart and mind were made of this nation in all its glory, all its inadequacies, and it held everyone cutting across every conceivable distinction.  Amaradeva cleared the high noted of our multiple histories and held the integrity of the deep foundations of our cultural ethos.  That’s how he became and for a long time will remain the voice of our nation.

Time will pass and his name will pass into the many names among the forgotten in the birth-decay-death of our common human condition, but there will be days, now and for a long time to come, when Amaradeva will be present and ready for renewal and rediscovery, endowed with history and heritage giving us in his own indescribable ways the forgotten yesterdays and inhabitable tomorrows.

There can be no short tribute.  And no long tribute will be long enough.  It is tempting to draw from one of the hundreds of songs that many of us grew up with, many of us were consoled by in times of grief, many of us were lifted by for countless reasons, but that would be disservice to both singer and lyricist.

For this reason, I choose the words scripted for a TV show on Amaradeva.  They were written by Bandula Nanayakkarawasam who, interestingly, had just one ‘Amaradeva Song’ to his credit, never recorded but sung by the maestro on May 18, 1989 when Amaradeva’s classic book ‘Nada Sittam’ was launched.

This is what Bandula wrote:
ගම අමතක වීද ඔහුගෙන් විමසන්න 
නගරය මග හැරුනිද ඔහු සොයා යන්න 
රට අමතක වීද ඔහු ඇති බව අදහන්න 
ගහ-කොළ, ඉර-හඳ, ඇළ-දොළ, සමුදුර, කුරුළු-ගී 
ඈ නෙක දියදම් අරුම නොපෙනී නොඇසී ගියේද 
ඔහු ඇසි දිසි මානයේ රැඳෙන්න 
මේ පුංචි කොදෙව්වේ,  මව් දෙරණේ 
මේ සියල්ල ඔහුය  
‘If you’ve forgotten the village, ask him
If you are lost in a city, go find him
If you forgot the nation, believe that he lives
The trees, the sun and moon, the ocean, bird song…
These and other enchanting things……..
should you not see them, should you not hear
Go stand before him, stay within the circle of his gaze.
In this tiny island, in our motherland 
He alone is all these things.”

My friend Nishad Handunpathirana who knows much more about music than those who make knowing-claims and therefore, perhaps, says little, said a few words: ‘He was our Tagore’.  Perhaps that’s one way of putting it.  Another way is possible, Bandula has shown.  He was Amaradeva. Ours.

There is silence amid the clutter of sound.  It’s the silence of a singular passing.  The voice of the nation has gone silent.  And strangely, in this world made of transience, it would probably linger. More tenderly.  Yes, softer still.
 
This article was first published in the ‘Daily Mirror’ (November 4, 2016).  
Milton M(www.dailynews.lk)

Milton Mallawarachchi: The voice of a thousand love letters

March 20, 2017 by admin
Classical, Milton Mallawarachchi, uditha, Uditha Devapriya

Victor Ratnayake’s signature, some contend, come out most potently in his love songs. I am unfortunately not a musicologist, only a listener, but to my untrained ear, those love songs of his stand out powerfully from the sixties to the eighties. And it’s not just his voice or his songs: even in his film scores, you sense at once how powerfully romantic his vision of the world is.

The opening passages in Deno Dahak Atharin, Neela Bingu Kala, and Bambarindu Bambarindu and the music in Rajagedara Parawiyo and Sarungale build up not in gushes, but with a flow, so much so that his melodies moves along gracefully. Unlike Amaradeva, he isn’t constrained by the raghadari tradition. Unlike Khemadasa, he doesn’t let the liberatory thrust of the Western melody take over.

Of his songs, I consider Deno Dahak Atharin and Piyasalana Lihinayaku Se as defining that romantic vision of the world the man imbibed. With these two songs, you can infer how intense that vision was: so intense, in fact, that he has to be subtle about it to reveal his feelings. Deno Dahak Atharin is played out in a sequence from Sunil Ariyaratne’s Vajira, with Nadeeka Gunasekara’s character crying for her lover to return. Piyasalana Lihinayaku Se, on the other hand, is richer because it doesn’t accompany a set of images.

Deno Dahak got Victor working with Nanda Malini. Piyasalana got him working with Milton Mallawarachchi. With the former, he was working with an established voice. With the latter, he was working with an as yet unrecognised star. For Milton, shunned as he was for being unmusical, had to cross some hard yards to get to where he stands today. This week’s star being Milton, this is hence a tribute to the man, his voice, and his life.

He was born on April 7, 1944 and was educated at Ananda Shasthralaya in Kotte. While he hadn’t aspired much for the music industry as a child, after leaving school he wound up with two groups. The first, called the Sakyans, was short-lived, while the second, Les Ceylonians, not only got him to sing two hits (“Daha Duke Vidyahala” and “Mal Ravamal”) but got the attention of Patrick Corea. One thing led to another, Corea got him to sing under the Exvee record label, and in 1969, he recorded his first original hit, “Oruwaka Pawena”, in turn accompanied by three other singles: “Ran Kooduwak Oba Sadu”, “Sansare Sewanalle” and “Mangale Neth Mangale.”

When I met Victor last year, I put to him that given his unmusical voice, Milton would have found it difficult adjusting to the demands of his composers. Victor vehemently disagreed and pointed out that even Jothipala, with his pavement (“bajavu”) voice, was accommodative and could adjust. Victor had the credentials to say what he did there, because when Milton was up and coming, he took him, nurtured him, moulded him, and released him.

Like Kapuge and Jothipala, he probably would have ruffled some feathers with his voice today. But what he lacked in vocal range and texture, he made up for with his articulation. Put simply, he made you understand and know that he was sincere about what he sang. For the rest of his career, that is what sustained him.

What happened after the sixties? He got to work with Patrick Denipitiya (“Ma Nisa Oba”), Clarence Wijewardena (“Mata Men Ohutada”), Khemadasa (“Sakwala Rathwana”), and Melroy Dharmaratne (“Mai Gaha Yata”). He was a film playback singer as well, making his debut with Poojithayo in 1971 and winning a Sarasaviya Award with “Kandan Yannam” (from Athin Athata) in 1984. He got an entire live concert to himself courtesy of the Ceylon Tobacco Company and Mahajana Sampatha. The Super Golden Chimes featured him in their concerts, through an invitation extended by Clarence himself.

In the end, after all those hits, awards, accolades, and packed crowds, he passed away on March 10, 1998. He was 53. Had he lived, he would have 72.

What else can we say? That he continues to be sung everywhere: on bus rides, at Big Matches, at birthday parties, and at get-togethers. He had a voice which was made for the guitar, so for that reason both children and adults celebrate him. He spoke and articulated the wishes, hopes, and dreams of a thousand lovers. He had a life and he had a family, both of which no doubt shaped his dukbara, romantic view of the world.

Added to all these, moreover, he had sincerity. There’s no doubt, after all, that Eda Rae is reminiscent of the best poetry of Thomas Hardy, in how it features the fissure between love and rejection and between embracement and separation that makes up the best love songs. It needed Milton to reinforce that. He did just that.

And what he did for that song, we can hence conclude, he did for every other song. The way he wanted, the way we wanted. Simple as that.

By Uditha Devapriya

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