Kala Korner

Tissa Abeysekera, now Dr. Tissa after he was awarded a D. Litt from the Colombo University which he richly deserved as "a creative artist and intellectual commentator" as the citation described, gave us some home truths in the convocation address he delivered early this month at the University of Visual & Performing Arts. He titled his address 'Cultural orthodoxy and popular Sinhala music'. Reading through a copy of the address I got from Tissa, I found it most revealing. It took me back to the 1950s when the 'Ratanajankar episode' threw out the singer we adored most, Sunil Shantha from the State radio. (Professor Ratanajankar from Bhatkande University was brought in to re-audition the local radio artistes).

Tissa analyses in detail how those responsible for Sinhala music at Radio Ceylon, as SLBC was then called, and the School of Music were adamant that North Indian classical music should be the foundation on which Sinhala music should be built. He is critical of their attitudes and justifies his thesis.

As most of us would agree, Tissa states that the contemporary phase in Sinhala music begins with the songs of Ananda Samarakoon. "Samarakoon was not a great singer. But his voice had an honesty and an open throated vitality which charmed the local listener. Its appeal lay in the kind of plaintive folky-ness like in the American Country singers. But above all, his melodies grew out of the language in which they were rendered and here too Samarakoon's lyrics were couched in the picturesque idiom of Sinhala folk poetry. For the first time, Sinhala language found a songwriter who could harmonize the syllable and the note. But what was more important here was that Samarakoon, not perhaps by conscious design, liberated the Sinhala song from the rigid melodic mode of the Hindustani light song rooted in the ineffective phonetics of the Urdu language," he says.

Tissa describes Sunil Shantha as "an absolute genius as a melody maker whose vocal sophistication is yet to be bettered in this country." He adds: "In his singing, he deliberately avoided the decorative elements of the Hindustani raag, because he claimed they belonged to the Urdu language and would cause syllabic distortions when applied to Sinhala. The clean melodic contours of his songs were meant to harmonize with the 'elu', an idiom in Sinhala writing which avoids Sanskritized poetic diction. Sunil Shantha's mission was to create a music essentially Sinhala in its total sound, and in this he would have drawn inspiration from the Tagorean experiment; Ravindra Sangeeth was built on the rhythms and cadences of the Bengali Renaissance. Sunil Shantha himself was working in the high noon of the post-war cultural reawakening in Sri Lanka."

Pointing out that the musical structures of these songs, free of the complex and aleatory movements of Oriental melody, allowed them to be played on western musical instruments, especially the piano, Tissa describes how western hotel bands picked them up on brass, and in such versions they were generously embellished with chordwork, harmony and counterpoint, staples of the western musical system.

Identifying P.L.A. Somapala and B.S. Perera as two Sinhala musicians brought up on the Samarakoon-Sunil Shantha wave, he mentions that they used the open melodic structures of the style to indulge in heavy western-style orchestrations for their recordings. They began a new trend and through their songs emerged a new generation of singers - Chitra, C.T. Fernando, Kanthi Wackwella, Vincent de Paul Peries being the most popular of them. Their songs had the simplicity of folk songs, and the lyrics were sentimental and romantic and they facilitated community singing. That's why 'Isurumuniya', 'Lalitha kala', 'Barabage', 'Selalihni kovul',' Dura pena theni tala' and 'Siripade samanala kanda pene' are popular to this day. Tissa reminisces: "It was a golden twilight and we sang these songs with gusto, in school, whenever or wherever we gathered on happy occasions, played them on reedy mouth organs, and they have lingered through the years to be picked up by each one of three generations since then." How true!

Pioneers of today

Coming to more recent times, Tissa pays tribute to Premasiri Khemadasa whose exercises in western musical forms both where orchestration and vocal expression are concerned, despite serious flaws, have been seminal. "His daring forays into uncharted regions in fusion, would never have been possible within the confines of our official musical establishment which remains unchanged basically since the days of 'Ratanajankar' edict."

Tissa keeps Amaradeva out of his discussion saying he is unique and has to be judged by the high musical values he works by. As for musicians of today, Tissa recognises Harsha Makalanda and Pradeep Ratnayake as the two most exciting musicians in the local scene. "They broke free of the traditions they were brought up in, to become the wonderfully innovative artistes they are. Makalanda was Sri Lanka's finest jazz pianist before he began drawing from the Sinhala folk tradition to begin composing. Pradeep grew up in the straitjacket at the 'raag', where he mastered the Sitar and then broke free to play jazz with Ravi Shankar's sacred instrument."

Stressing that the creative act in any medium demands a condition beyond all tradition, Tissa says the Sinhala music establishment is yet to accept that first we learn the basic principles of any art form and there is no issue of tradition there which comes later. "It looks down upon the immensely gifted musicians Bhatiya and Santush," he laments. "It is yet to appreciate what Khemadasa has done and is uneasy with the likes of Pradeep Ratnayake. It had already destroyed such pioneering talents as Sunil Shantha, B.S. Perera and C.T.Fernando. These are performers and composers thrown up by the uprush of public preference and that comes from a complex interplay of social conditions."