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premakeerthi-de-alwis

පාංකිරිත්තා

පාංකිරිත්තා

August 21, 2018 by admin
Freddie Silva, Janaka Boralessa, Premakeerthi De Alwis, ජනක බොරලැස්ස, පාංකිරිත්තා

උපහාසය හා හාස්‍ය මුසු ගී පද රචනා වර්ථමානයේ බිහිවනුයේ ඉතා කලාතුරකිනි. ප්‍රේමකීර්ති ද අල්විස් මහතා එවැනි උපහාසය හා හාස්‍ය මුසු ගී පද රචනා නිර්මාණයේ පුරෝගාමියා වූ බව සැවොම දන්නා කරුණකි. උපහාසයේ හා අපහාසයේ වෙනස හොඳින් ගැනීමට ඉවහල් වූ එවැනි ගීත වලින් සමාජයට ලැබුනේ ඉතා වටිනා පණිවුඩයක්.
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උපහාසාත්මක ගීත ගායනයේ ප්‍රමුඛයා වුනේ ජනාදරයට පත් විකට නළු සහ ගායක ෆ්‍රෙඩී සිල්වා. “පාංකිරිත්තා, හඳමාමා උඩින් යතේ, දවසක් දා කකුළුවෙකුට මොනවද හිතිලා, අමුතු ඇඳුම් ඇඳ හඬවන රබානකි අතේ, අලුත් කලාවක් හොයාගත්ත මං දියුණුවෙන්න ඕනෑ නම්, පරණ කෝට්” වැනි උපහාසාත්මක ගීත රැසක් ෆ්‍රෙඩී සිල්වා විසින් ගායනා කලා.
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ආදරණීය ප්‍රේම් අතින් මෙවැනි උපහාසාත්මක ගීත ලියුවුනේ ෆ්‍රෙඩී සිල්වා වෙනුවෙන් පමණක් නොවේ. මළ පොතේ අකුරු බෑ කී මිනිහා (මාලනී බුලත්සිංහල), මිනිසෙකු පිට නැගි අසරුවෙකි (සුනිල් එදිරිසිංහ), කන්ද කෙන්ද කරනු පිනිස (මාලනී බුලත් සිංහල) තවත් එවැනි ගීත කිහිපයක්.
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මේ ගීත අතරින් “පාංකිරිත්තා” ගීතය කුඩා කාලයේ සිටම සිතෙහි රැඳුණු ගීතයක්. ඒ නිසාම ගීතයෙන් කියවෙන අවස්ථාව දළ සිතුවමකට නැගුවෙමි. ගීතයෙන් කියවෙන සියුම් උපහාසය අපි හැමෝටම වැදගත්.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………….

පාංකිරිත්තා තක්කිට තරිකිට උඩ පැන පැන නටතෙයි
පාංකිරිත්තී රබාන අරගෙන කරබාගෙන වයතෙයි
උන්ගේ පැටවුන් වටේට ඉඳගෙන දෑතින් හඬ තලතෙයි
මේවා බල බල තනි කෑඳැත්තෙක් කීචි බීචි කියතෙයි
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පාංකිරිත්තා තමන්ගෙ පාඩුවෙ නැටුම පටන්ගත්තේ
අහල පහල කිසිවෙකුටත් ඒකෙන් හිරිහැරයක් නැත්තේ
කොහේද හිඳ පැමිණුනු කෑඳැත්තා වහලා අර අත්තේ
උන්ගෙ නැටුමට බාදා කරමින් ගීය පටන්ගත්තේ
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පාංකිරිත්තා නැටුම නවත්තා කේන්තියෙන් ආවා
කෑඳැත්තාගේ කළු අත්තටුවෙන් අල්ලා සෙලවූවා
ඊට පස්සෙ ඌ සට සට ගාලා මොන මොනවද කීවා
ළඟට කිට්ටු වී මා ද ගොළුවතින් ඊට සවන් පෑවා
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අනුන්ගෙ වැඩ ගැන විවේචනය කර කර ඉන්නවට වඩා
තමන් දන්න දේ හරියට කරපන් කියලා කීය හඬා……
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ගායනය – ෆ්‍රෙඩී සිල්වා
පද රචනය – ප්‍රේමකීර්ති ද අල්විස්

Premakeerthi (www.fragmenteyes.blogspot.com)

Reflections on Premakeerthi de Alwis

November 18, 2016 by admin
Premakeerthi De Alwis, uditha, Uditha Devapriya

There are certain things we look out for in a song. For better or worse however, the melody and the voice tend to predominate. Few would, I’m willing to bet, look for the lyricist. Not that he or she is marginalised and in other ways skewed, but when a song’s worth is being assessed, it’s what pleases the ears (more than just words) that crop up at once. Consequently then, identity is attributed to that which wins immediate attention, a truism which applies to any work of art and not just music. I can think of a few good reasons why this happens. Now’s not the time, though.

Lyricists display their worth in ways which scholarship can’t really do much justice to at times. Some would argue that this is especially true when it comes to lyricists who wrote simply and to the point. I would agree. Among them, we can or rather should include Premakeerthi de Alwis, who would have been 69 this year and 70 the next. Had he lived.

Premakeerthi had a way with words. He wrote prodigiously. So prodigiously that no one can contend he didn’t write enough. He also wasn’t selective in the themes he (chose to) write on: some of his best songs were in fact rooted in personal experience. His achievement, which we realised at once, was that this didn’t make them (too) personalised. In other words, they touched us as much as they would have touched him. It was like they’d been written for us.

On the other hand, it wasn’t just experience he turned to words. He could be didactic. He turned the world we lived in, looked at our collective hypocrisy, and called a spade a spade, giving his words to the one person who could and did retain satire in them all, Freddie Silva.

Here, for instance, are the opening lines to “Handa Mama”

හඳ මාමා උඩින් යතේ
අපෙ මාමා බිමින් යතේ…

In the course of that song, Freddie and Premakeerthi talk of accomplishment and failure, of those who strive and those who choose to idle:

දියුණු වන්න වේලාවක් නැති විය
අපෙ මාමා තව පහළ ගියා
රාජකාරි හරි අකුරට ඉටුකළ
හඳ මාමා තව ඉහළ ගියා…

And yet, there’s humour. Enough and more to make us laugh at ourselves, a feat both singer and lyricist achieve in their other work. Even in “Boru Kakul Karaya”, which begins with a conversation between a son and father over some men on stilts and then meanders to social discourse, we see that:

බොරු අහංකාරකම්කෙ
නෙකුගෙ නැතිවුණොත් හිතේ
එයා උඩින් නොවෙයි බිමින්ගි
යත් වැරැද්දක් නැතේ
බොරුකකුල් මෙයා වාගෙ
බැඳල නැති නමුත් පුතේ…
ඔය වාගෙ උඩින් යන ඈයෝ
හුඟක් ලොව ඇතේ…

He was not political. Just didactic. That’s how we got his message.

What else did he do? In these songs (as with his later work), Premakeerthi toyed around with metaphor and imagery and brought the two together. He was never one to abandon the one for the other, never one to favour abstraction over simplicity. In the phase that followed, he cultivated and honed in on this ability of his so much that he matured. Which was why, in the two songs most associated with Mervyn Perera today (“Obe Dedunna Akasaye” and “Mey Nagaraye”), the imagery seemed to flow off the words and voice almost effortlessly:

සුළඟේ නළවා
පෙර සේ එනවා
ඔබ මා කළඹා
කිමදෝ යන්නෙ නොරැඳී ගලා…

I’m no poet and my knowledge of Sinhala is at best limited, but when I listen to these lyrics today I can only conclude that the man visualised and imagined (and not just penned) what he wrote. How else, one can legitimately wonder, could he adapt the vocal texture of his language to another in “Kundumani”, where Freddie Silva triumphed with Premakeerthi (and also Victor Ratnayake, the composer) and did as a singer what Gamini Fonseka did as an actor (in the film “Sarungale”): articulate Sinhala as a Tamil person would so starkly that it was hard to spot the difference?

But if all this was true, why was this man forgotten? Why was he haunted by anonymity? And why are we still “discovering” his work?

Because he wrote for the vocalist, some will reply. Because he wrote for the image and that image dissolved into melody, others will conjecture. Either way, no one can concede (as they can with other lyricists, even those celebrated today) that he didn’t write enough. If they can, it goes to show that he shouldn’t have been robbed from us, that he should have survived and continued to live with us. He was overwhelmed with so many requests to write by those who doted on him. They would have continued pestering and requesting him to write more had he lived, I’m sure.

On July 31, 1989, he was gunned down. He’d announced (for he had a voice and he could speak) at a Gam Udawa ceremony a few days earlier. That was a crime for his assailants in terms of political preference and rhetoric, a crime punishable only by death. A strange line of thinking, but then again politics (and ideology) does strange things to human beings. Sure, people have been killed for lesser crimes. But with Premakeerthi that wasn’t just murder. That was theft. A theft so serious that upon his erasure, we lost not just a lyricist but a resident of this country we would have been proud to call “One of us!”

That is why we celebrate his life today. We celebrate it not merely because he wrote so well but because he wrote for us and in turn ABOUT us. For we were those who walk on stilts, who idle and celebrate idleness even as they admonish other idlers, and who feel the pain of love as intimately as he might have. He derived authenticity from us. In the end, we gave him as much as we took (and learnt) from him. The best tribute to such an artiste, I’m sure, would be remembrance. Not frill. And certainly not anonymity.

By Uditha Devapriya

Premakeerthi de Alwis (Malinda Words)

Premakeerthi de Alwis and colours that remain unnamed

October 23, 2016 by admin
Malinda Seneviratne, Premakeerthi De Alwis

My maternal grandmother died on what would have been the 50th birthday of her daughter, who had died at the age of 10. My father mentioned it in passing and observed softly that it can take a long time to get over someone’s death. This is true. People come into our lives without notice, without bugle call and press release. They go without saying anything sometimes. And they return in the same way.

I had grieved and done with grieving, I thought, for my friends who died in the late eighties for the crime of having been born in the wrong decade, but they returned and demanded fresh tears one inauspicious day in the year 1998 as I watched a documentary about characters and events captured in the telling recounting of the ouster of Salvadore Allende’s democratically elected Government in Chile in 1973, Battle of Chile. The sequel aptly titled Chile: Obstinate Memory was shot by the same film-maker, Patricio Guzm n, in 1997. It called forth ghosts that had refused to leave memory in terms of time’s dictates which I had thought held but that is another story.

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Premakeerthi de Alwis

Today I am writing about a different arrival. It happened last Saturday. Maharagama Youth Centre. A concert in aid of an artiste who needed a kidney transplant. Sandakadapahana. Sunil Edirisinghe. There was a poorvikaava (introductory) to each song, enlightening a full house of circumstances that birthed composition, implication of thought or some musical oddity. At one point the artiste spoke, in his characteristic mildness, about a lyricist. Premakeerthi de Alwis. He rattled off some of the better known compositions to which he, Sunil, had added voice. He spoke wistfully about Premakeerthi. He didn’t mention the circumstances of his absence, i.e. the fact of his ‘absenting’.

Today, Premakeerthi, had he been alive, would be 63. He was at the time of his death a prolific lyricist and a much sought after one too. Sunil mentioned Muniseku pita negi asaruweki (‘A horse riding a man’, naturally about gambling) and Banen benda rajarata pedesinne (a poignant song decrying cattle slaughter). I checked the Internet. I was stunned. Readers don’t really know who writes the news stories they read in newspapers because very few look at the bylines. It is the same with lyricists. We know the songs by heart. We know who sings them. We don’t really know who wrote them. On July 31, 1989, exactly 21 years ago, a group of masked men led Premakeerthi de Alwis, then a presenter attached to Rupavahini, out of his house. He was shot dead. The murderers, without doubt, were members of the deadly Deshapremi Janatha Vyaparaya (DJV) and that meant ‘JVP’ back then. His ‘crime’ apparently was that he had ‘announced’ at a Gam Udawa. He was 42.

I found that most of my favourite Sinhala songs were penned by this man. I realized too that while I do appreciate melody, it is to the lyrics that I am more attached. I am not unappreciative of voice and melody of course. I love the compositions of Rohana Weerasinghe, H M Jayawardena and some of Khemadasa’s melodies. I can listen to Amaradeva for hours. Victor Ratnayake’s voice makes me float. Gunadasa Kapuge makes me sober. Sunil Ariyaratne enchants with what to my untrained ear is the achievement of a pure tone. T M Jayaratne can make me cry. I could go on. No, on second thoughts, I can’t. I can see Premakeerthi with his grin, his caustic turn of phrase when irked and the music of word conjugation, standing beside this orchestra of voices.

He gave me Aadaraye ulpatha voo amma (‘Mother, the Spring of Love’) and Sihina sathak dutuwemi mama(I saw seven dreams), using Victor Ratnayake. He made me laugh, though Freddie Silva’s rendering ofNikan innepa kohoma koma hari gahapalla ban pethsam (Don’t waster time, write petitions) and made me dance with Kundumanee (again by Freddie). I have returned to TM’s Sithin ma noselee sitiddi kandula numba evidin (Tears, you have come to alleviate the eye’s pain), Mervin Perera’s timeless love song, Me nagaraya (This city – where we met and parted) and Oba dedunna aakasaye (You are the rainbow in the sky), Milton Mallawarachchi’s Sihinen oba mata penenavanam (If I see you in my dreams) and hundreds more. Yes, I am aware that I’ve given ‘ownership’ to the singers. That’s a slip. They should belong, at least in part, to the lyricist. And of course to the listener. To me.

In 1996, I joined a set of Peradeniya undergraduates on a bus going to Colombo for a demonstration against proposed education reform. I was not a student, but I identified with the cause and got permission from the student activists organizing the protest. They were all JVPers. There were in that bus students opposed to the JVP. They had unsuccessfully tried to oust the JVP from the Arts Faculty Students’ Union. There was tension, but not too intense.

On the way back to Kandy, after being baton-charged and tear-gassed, the students did what they usually do on long bus rides. They sang. The JVP boys used song to crow over their rivals. The song was Kanda kenda karanu pinisa. It essentially said that mountains will not be shaken, but those who try to shake mountains will necessarily fall. The point was not lost and the humour was taken in the right spirit. I am sure the JVPers would have known that it was sung by Malini Bulathsinhala. I am sure also that they would not have known that it was written by a person called Premakeerthi de Alwis.

The world and life are made of songs. They need to be written down. Listening to Sunil Edirisinghe, I realized that there are hundreds of songs that will not get written. Ever. We can’t name the colours that we have not seen. We can’t write the songs that were meant to be written by a particular pen. Premakeerthi de Alwis is dead.

I want to be silent for a while. Better still, I will go listen to some songs. We need to be thankful for what we have.

 

First published in the Daily News (July 31, 2010)

Source: http://malindawords.blogspot.com/

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