Stirring, rhythmic words from howling winds
By Alfreda de Silva
Outside my window the wind shrieks like a banshee, the trees dance madly,
throwing leaves and flowers from the araliya on the lawn. Far away the
thunder crackles.
Not the best of weathers for inspiration to guide the unpredictable
pen, one might say. But weathers, fair and foul have stirred poets to produce
music, ranging from the sombre and menacing to the rhythmic and majestic.
Thomas Hardy, well-known for his novels such as Under the Greenwood
Tree, Jude the Obscure, the Dynasts and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, wrote
poetry which was natural and spontaneous. His poems have the ebb and flow
of controlled emotion, when he writes of the elements. In Weathers he sings:
"This is the weather the shepherd shuns
And so do I,
When beeches drip in browns and duns,
And thresh and ply.
And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe
And meadow rivulets overflow,
.... And rooke in families homeward go
And so do I".
W.B. Yeats born in Dublin boasted the rich heritage and imagery of Ireland,
its mysticism and folklore. Beginning with the dreamy, evocative romanticism
of his early poetical career he moved on to something more vigorous and
earthy.
A turning point in his life was his meeting with Lady Gregory, promoter
of Irish literature. Of interest to us is the fact that she was the wife
of Sir William Gregory, a former Governor of Ceylon. His statue stands
in front of the Colombo museum.
Lady Gregory's patronage and her invitation to him to her country house,
Coole Park in Galway, gave Yeats the opportunity to write in elegant and
aristocratic surroundings. He saw this lifestyle as a way of bringing order
to chaos, a view he expresses in poems like Prayer for My Daughter. It
begins with lines depicting a storm:
"Once more the storm is howling and half-hid
Under the cradle-hood and coverlet
My child sleeps on.....
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream.....
The American poet, Carl Sandburg, held a variety of jobs as reporter,
sceneshifter, athlete, dish-washer, copywriter and itinerant guitar player
among other things. He writes about a common feature of the aftermath of
the sort of rain we've been having for some time now-Frog Songs. They go
with what sounds like a quixotic symphony. But in this overture, the singing
is all bass and tenor, with a lull for a well-timed soloist to take over
now and then. Perhaps Sandburg heard those frogs out there in Illinois,
as we hear them in their strange music. Here are Sandburg's words:
"The silver burbles of the frogs wind and swirl,
The lines of their prongs swing up in a spray.
..... The eye sees nothing, the ear is filled, the head remembers
The beat of the swirl of the frog throat silver prongs
In the early springtime when eggs open, when feet learn,
When the crying of the water begins a new year".
The poetry of wind and rain is not only an expression of music.
It is also one of a heightened awareness of the environment and its myth
and magic of the seasons.
American poet Barbara Howes is the author of several books of poetry,
and has had her short stories and poetry published in prestigious magazines.
Her translations from the French have appeared in well-known anthologies.
She won a Brandeis University Poetry Grant, and spent two years as a Guggenheim
Fellow in Italy. There is an underlying menace, a sense of evil in her
poem Mistral, the dry wind that blows from the north through the Rhone
valley in France. It overpowers her:
"Percussive, furious, this wind
Sweeps down the mountain and
Under the pennon of skirling air
Blows through each red-tiled house as if
Nothing were there....
As I start home a coven
Of winds is let loose at every corner;
Alone in a howling
Waste, figurehead sculptured in air,
Bent low, deafened, I plunge
On, blind in the eye of the storm."
Howard Nemerov was a Harvard scholar, consultant in poetry to the Library
of Congress for 1963-1964 and a widely reorganized authority on American
Literature.
Besides poetry he has written novels, short stories and a variety of
essays.
From his artistic perspective and sensitive mind we have this poem A
Spell Before Winter. It is about the late fall when the glory of the fiery
autumn leaves on the trees have been shed:
"After the red leaf and the gold have gone,
Brought down by the wind, then by hammering rain
Bruised and discoloured when October's flame
Goes blue to guttering in the cusp, this land
Sinks deeper into silence, darker into shade
There is a knowledge in the look of things....."
Ted Hughes was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1984 till the time of his
death in October 1998. Born in Yorkshire, he knew all about weathers in
his capricious landscape. He was married to the intense and brilliant American
poet, Sylvia Path, when she was on a Fulbright Grant to Newnham College
in Cambridge. They were divorced a few years before her suicide, which
made tragic history in literary circles. His poem Wind is alive with feeling:
"This house has been far out at sea all night
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills.
Winds stampeding the fields under the window,
Floundering black astride and blinding wet
Till day rose..... we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,
Or each other. We watch the fire blazing
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.
Fusion
of music styles
Harsha Makalande has always done something new in the music scene. His
latest effort is a CD titled 'Khrome'. He describes the songs as 'fusion'
- a blend of different music styles. Inspiration for these has come from
jazz, Indian classical music and Sri Lankan folk music.
The eight numbers are a fine mix. 'Prelude in F', for example, has been
described as 'a complex and interwoven work inspired by local drumming,
folk songs, 'Perahera' and low country chants and 'devol madu' music. In
the 'Gajaga', Harsha presents the popular Gajaga Vannama (there are 18
Vannams in Sinhala folk music) with a new twist.
Local drums like the Geta Bera, Davula, Tammattama, Devol Bera and Bummadiya
have been used extensively in Harsha's creations. He hastens to explain
that he has taken care to preserve the natural sound of these unique instruments.
Our rich folk tradition comes out strongly in Harsha's creations. They
also demonstrate Harsha's cleverness in identifying what can be used effectively
to suit contemporary tastes. He talks about the inspiration he has got
from 'Pirith Ose', a style of singing in Sinhala folk music, songs sung
during harvesting time, music used during the 'thevava' in temples . The
influence of these is clearly seen in most of the compositions. Some he
has rearranged while others have been used in the same format.
Something special
The CD also includes a drum composition by talented drummer Ravibandu Vidyapathy
who has been closely working with Harsha in recent years. Titled 'Drummers
and Dancers', it features Ravibandu's own custom built 'Kala Bera' along
with the traditional 'geta bera' and 'bummediya'.
Harsha started studying classical piano when he was just six. As a youngster
he played with a number of well-known groups and travelled extensively.
His big break came when, in 1992, the Colombo Symphony Orchestra performed
his work 'Svarasanga Vannama', a work for symphony orchestra, piano and
local drums. The composition has been incorporated into a doctoral research
project.
In his current effort, Harsha who plays the piano has been joined by
Mahinda Bandara (guitar), Hemapala Gallge (drums) and Guy Halpe (fretlass
bass).
Taste of Sinhala
Sinhala world of colours
By Prof. J.B. Disanayaka
All languages have words denoting colours, such as blue, red, green and
yellow. It is also interesting to note how some of these words have been
created. One of the simplest ways is to take the name of an object that
has that particular colour.
Take the English colour word 'orange'. The English have taken it from
the round reddish yellow fruit, which they call 'orange'. But are oranges
of the same colour? Of course not. The oranges that the English see are
'orange in colour' but the oranges that the Sinhalese see are not.
On the other hand, the Sinhalese have created colour words from their
physical environment. The Sinhala word for 'green' is 'kola' which is the
Sinhala word for 'leaves of trees'. Thus the Sinhala term 'kola paata'
(green colour) literally means 'the colour of leaves'.
So is the Sinhala word for 'yellow' which is 'kaha' the plant known
as turmeric, a plant that grows in abundance in Sri Lanka. Its fine powder
is used for giving a special taste and colour to food, both rice and curry.
In fact, there is a special preparation of rice (buth) known as 'kaha
buth' which is called 'yellow rice' in Sri Lankan English. The word 'saffron''
is also used to denote this powder and we often talk of a Buddhist monk's
saffron robes. |