Plus
|
|
|||
| First
to school and then to stardom Their music was built on a “little bit of everything” foundation - academic achievements, talent, aptitude and knowledge. Now Suriyakumar Veerasingham, a veteran Sri Lankan musician who has come full circle after spending years overseas playing with pop-rock bands and as a solo artiste and switching to teaching, wants to introduce the same all-round approach to the teaching and study of music in a system similar to what prevails in the United States. “Over the years the American system has consistently produced some of the world’s finest musicians through a system where musicians have aptitude and knowledge,” said Suriyakumar, an active 1970-1990s musician. Venturing into teaching in the past 10 years with the setting up of a state-run School of Modern Music in the Maldives where he worked, the once-Afro hairdo-wearing keyboards player is setting his sights on launching Sri Lanka’s first School of Music aimed at creating musicians who could hold their own in any part of the world. Ambitious project? “Not really,” says Suriyakumar, now with short-cropped hair and a more mature look. “We need to widen our approach to music and music learning. We must include new teaching methods and a varied curriculum. We must introduce students to different kinds of music like jazz, pop and modern music as well as expose them to the music of other cultures such as Oriental, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Middle Eastern etc,” he says. He believes in the American system of teaching music using much shorter and faster methods of teaching where a lot of emphasis is placed on creativity, improvisation, innovation and ear training. “Accelerated learning has never been formally introduced to students in South Asia. It is popular in the west. Extensive research by many prestigious universities in the world has shown that specifically formulated learning programmes stimulate retention and creativity,” he said in an interview, occasionally straying down memory lane. Suriyakumar’s first band was the Savages after it returned in 1968 from a tour of war-torn Vietnam playing for American troops. When the band went to Singapore, Suriyakumar was the keyboardist with Raj Seneviratne, Evans Balasooriya, Calvin Van Gramberg and Elmo Wijesundera being the other musicians. A versatile musician and multi-skilled – probably why he has ventured into teaching -- Suriyakumar can play keyboards, drums, saxophone and piano. The transition to electric keyboards from the piano came at a time the immensely popular Shadows, British star Cliff Richard’s backing band and often a stand-alone-act, introduced keyboards to the world pop scene. The Clan, which he formed, was the first band to play at a local five-star hotel – Hotel Ceylon Intercontinental in the early 1970s. It was a three-piece outfit – one of the few around – comprising Upali Fernando on drums, Brian Felthman on bass and Suriyakumar on keyboards. Shifting back to his “dream” school, Suriyakumar asks, “What is talent?” and then proceeds to answer it himself. “Most of the time we describe people who have aptitude as being talented. This is an exaggeration of sorts. It is a misunderstanding of the concept of aptitude, talent and genius. All human beings have an aptitude to learn almost anything. The degree of aptitude varies from person to person. Some have a greater aptitude than others. A very high level of aptitude is talent. This too varies in degrees. Those who have extremely high levels of talent are geniuses.” He says one need not have talent to do music. Any student can learn music – all it needs is a basic level of aptitude. This versatile musician has tied up with a Maldivian entrepreneur to launch his new school and if successful move into other parts of South Asia using a slightly different approach to what is adopted in teaching music nowadays in this region. He says Sri Lanka has excellent music teachers but over the last 50 to 60 years the country has produced just a few musicians who can hold their own on an international stage. The two British examination bodies – Trinity College, London and the Associated Boards of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) which hold their examinations in Colombo have a structure of which infrastructure is not available in most developing countries. This is access to music composers, performers, concert pianists, music publishers, music book stores, musical concerts and an array of music and theatre productions. The once- yearly examination structure has 10 to 12 years of graded exams before you sit for a diploma level examination. These examinations are one of the most thorough for the learning of western classical music. It is without doubt an excellent system meant to nurture aspiring concert pianists and performers, he agrees but points out that these examinations are only for western classical music. On the other hand with certain types of music played in the background, the learning process can be accelerated by almost three to four times. “So simply put, you can learn something (including taking examinations) in about 25 percent of the usual time,” he says, explaining the different approach that he is offering. Digressing again, he says one little known fact about Clarence Wijewardene, the doyen of Sinhala pop following in the footsteps of C.T. Fernando, is that the former played a bit of English pop too. “In the 1980s I played in Clarence’s Super Golden Chimes and when it came to English music engagements, I was virtually leading the band while Clarence did some of the harmony.” Suriyakumar wants to present an all-round thrust to music and music teaching, concentrating on the salient features needed to learn the fundamentals. “Nobody can teach children music. What one can do is to teach them how to play music. The fundamentals must be clearly explained and taught.” |
||||
Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
