Plight of Sinhala music

Sri Lanka’s leading songstress Nanda Malini lamented at the pathetic state of Sinhala music back at home, during a concert held in Sydney recently. “No one seems to be showing any interest,” she stressed. She virtually said that there was no future for Sinhala music.

Seeing a full house at the large community hall at Blacktown, the ‘Lady in white’ said she was so happy to see so many Sri Lankans turning up for a musical show. She had been coming to Australia annually in the past few years and she had noticed the enthusiasm shown by the fans in every city she visited. She hinted that those back at home no longer seem to show such an interest.

Clad in her usual white ‘osariya’, she walked in with a broad smile with her hands clasped responding to the clapping of the audience, as Sudath Maliyadde’s seven-man orchestra played the introductory music for the song she was going to sing. 

With no separate announcer to introduce her or the numbers she was going to sing, she did that job herself – quite effectively with interesting anecdotes from her musical life spanning over a period of nearly 60 years. 

Nanda Malini was quite emotional when she discussed the song ‘Ammavarune’ – the favourite of many – written by Dharmasiri Gamage. She went back to the day she delivered her first child at the Castle Street Maternity Hospital when she was 24. As she looked round after she recovered from the caesarean operation she had undergone, she found her mother resting on the ground on a sheet of paper. She was stunned and started crying. She realised the love of a mother who is willing to undergo any hardship on behalf of a child. 

She paid glowing tributes to the pioneers who worked hard to create an indigenous music tradition - Ananda Samarakoon, Sunil Santha and Pandit Amaradeva. It was Amaradeva who paved the way for her long musical journey when he picked her to sing in Mike Wilson film, ‘Ranmuthuduwa’ (1961). 

He had heard her sing in the children’s programmes in Radio Ceylon and was confident hers would be the ideal voice to sing the song ‘Galana gangaka jeevithe’, which she sang with Narada Disasekera. Both of them were adjudged the best playback singers at the Sarasaviya Film Festival with Amaradeva winning the award as the best music and Chandraratne Manawasinghe as the best lyrics writer.

At the Sydney concert Nanda Malini sang one of Ananda Samarakoon’s most popular songs, ‘Akke akke ara balannako – veassak nove enne’ as a tribute to him. Accompanying her was Upul Mahen. A few years back Nanda released a CD with Samarakoon’s songs.

She was much impressed the way the crowd responded to the call to join her in singing one of her favourite numbers, ‘Kap suwahas kal perumpuragana….’  She had a broad smile when she saw so many in the audience – both males and females – singing the lines she wanted them to repeat.

Along with Nanda, T.M. Jayaratne and Karunaratne Divulgane presented their popular numbers which were well received by the audience.