Bens, those music makers
The sound of voices, scores of voices rising in glorious rounded harmonies, is spilling out of the upper windows of a grey four-storey building in choc-a-block Kotahena. Out on the road, it’s all rumbling buses and honking horns, but up there, something magical is happening. Benedictines, some very young and some not so young, are pouring their life’s energy into the school’s musical production of a century.
The legacy lives on: Young Bens at rehearsals. Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
In 1834, the Roman Catholic Church in Ceylon, attached to the Cochin Vicariate, was consolidated into a new Vicariate Apostolic of its own. This created a new-found enthusiasm about Catholic education in the island. On May 16, 1839, the Roman Catholic Seminary was declared open in Wolfendhal Street by Rt. Rev. Dr. Vincente de Rosario, Bishop of Tamocene and Vicar Apostolic of Colombo, also the patron of the new seminary.
For a long time, the school was run simply on the energy and dedication of three teachers, even as student enrolments grew from less than a hundred to multiple hundreds. Finally, on February 13, 1863, the cornerstone for a new home for the school was laid. Building was completed in 1865, and students of the seminary were moved here by their then principal H. F. Sales in 1866.
And so, St. Benedict’s College as we know it today, was born. Denzil Perera who joined St. Benedict’s in 1951 and schooled there until 1962 is one of the few Benedictines still in the music scene who witnessed the unintentional sparking of a musical legacy at the college.
St. Benedict’s always had music in its system. Denzil was part of the school choir that won the national award for “best choir” under Bonnie Fonseka’s training, and remembers singing regularly at performances outside the school, even as a very young boy. The teachers of the school, he recalls, had an orchestra in that day.
During the lunch break, which was a whole hour long, the boys of the school would loiter in the square, with nothing much to do. So a young teacher, Brother Edward, set up a “request show” for their entertainment. The boys could request any song for 5 cents, and have it played through loudspeakers up on the clock tower. The show was an instant hit, and led to the growth of the Bens Music Club – a gathering of schoolboys in the hall adjacent to the clock-tower, playing their own music, putting on their own show.
The Rodrigo Brothers, the Jetliners with Felix Fernando and Lucian Perera, Savage, Evans and Raj Balasuriya, and of course Denzil and Bosco, are a few of many great musicians who first played in front of an audience at this gathering.
The concept soon took off and girls from nearby Good Shepherd Convent started coming over to take part once a month. Dalreen Suby quickly became a star at these shows which were now much more than just a replay of songs from the west. It had become something the students themselves owned. It had become “Our Own Show”.
Current choir leader Dinelka Nanayakkara remembers being in awe of the choir when he was a new Benedictine. Music at St. Benedict’s, he says, is what cricket and rugby are at many other boys’ schools.
Krishan Rodrigo has been choirmaster at the college for 15 years now. “Our Own Show” next weekend is the biggest of all the productions he has walked the boys through, and he is proud of what the youngsters have achieved in preparing for this show in under six months. But he is even more proud of who they have become.
“Some of these boys join the choir when they are not even teenagers,” he explains, “and I find that in a few years, I’m having adult conversation with these same fellows!” To him, the process of coming together as musicians is so much more than just music. It is teamwork, respect, inculcating values, developing stamina, and the ability to adhere to command. “It makes you who you are.”
And although the original “Our Own Show” died out after Bro. Edward left, the trend it created, of musicianship as everybody’s legacy, still lives on at St. Benedict’s College.
It is this very fact that organizers of the show have set out to demonstrate with next Saturday’s version of “Our Own Show”, explains Co-chairman Naushad Mohideen. “The point is to mash-up the old with the new.” And the result is a very impressive line-up to say the least. “People see the list of performers and the first thing they ask is ‘are they all Benedictines!?’” Mohideen laughs. The answer is an emphatic yes.
From Denzil Perera of ‘Denzil & Bosco’ fame to Raj Seneviratne from the ‘Spitfires’, the Dharmaratne Brothers, Donald, Benjy and Gavin from ‘Mirage’ and VoicePrint, some of the best known names in the current music scene were born out of Brother Edward’s legacy at St. Benedict’s College, and are coming together to celebrate their alma mater at “Our Own Show” this Saturday.
Nearly 130 performers, young and old, singers and instrumentalists, the St. Benedict’s College Choir, the Benedictine Jubilee Choir, the Colombo Brass Ensemble and the Jubilee Orchestra will take the stage under the musical direction of Krishan Rodrigo, Francis D’Almeida, Dave De Visser and Dilan Irugalbandara. Beginning with the ‘Dixit Dominus’ and ‘O Fortuna’ from ‘Carmina Burana’ to Barbershop medleys and 60’s numbers and or to contemporary pop, the show will also feature Sinhala numbers by past Benedictines including Sunil Shantha and Vijaya Kumaratunga, beatbox battles with Julius Mitchell and the thrilling sounds of the Hallelujah Chorus and Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Don’t miss it!
Tickets for “Our Own Show” on Saturday, June 6 at 7 p.m. at the BMICH are available at Commons, Bayleaf, Colombo Fort Café, Park Street Mews, Harpo’ s Pizza, wow.lk and St. Benedict’s College, Kotahena.