One of the foremost musicians in our country made a journey back to his beginnings last week. It was a journey of nos-talgia and gratitude, when Pundit W. D. Amaradeva flew to India to join in the 75th birthday celebrations of his first violin guru in India Pundit Vishnu Govinda Jog.
We in Sri Lanka know Pundit Amaradeva more as a singer than an instrumentalist. It is possible that we might even forget the rigorous discipline he had to undergo in the tradition of classical Hindustani music when we listen to his songs, carrying with it the rhythms, melodies and the scent of our folk music, in what we can now call the serious semi-classical music of Sri Lanka. How and when this transition occurred is all a part of this remarkable man's journey of life.
Amaradeva was born W. D. Albert Perera to a family in Koralawella, Moratuwa where the father was a carpenter. "Not just a carpenter but a craftsman who could turn his hand at exquisite carvings in wood and who could also make me my first violin," recalls Amaradeva. There were also many violins at home, he adds, because all the trained teachers in music in that area who had had to learn violin as a part of their training during that time, brought their instruments to his father for repairs. So the touch that Amaradeva has on the violin, as gentle as that of a lover, as anyone who has seen him play would notice was brought about by many many years of intimate contact with that instrument.
His first exposure to classical Indian music was when his eldest brother, W. D. Charles Perera, himself a carpenter-technician, learnt the RRagadhai tradition in violin at a kalayathanaya or art school here and came home to teach him what he had learnt that day. So really, those who first gifted the instrument and the movement into his hand were from his own family.
"But I would call myself truly a people's artist." says Amaradeva. "Because when I went to India to study music, it was with the money of many people here that I could go. There was a fund raised by the Lankadeepa Newspaper during the 1950's called the Amaradeva Scholarship Fund to which many people sent in money even five rupees from a villager far away which made my education possible."
How the scholarship came about was when D. B. Dhanapala, the then editor of Lankadeepa heard the young Albert Perera recite a few poems from the Salalihini Sandeshaya and decided that this young man deserved further training. Together with people like Sarchchandra, who had by then been to Santiniketan, the great centre of Indian Art they thought that the exposure to, the knowledge of and the discipline involved in Indian Classical music would help the young man reach his full potential as a musician.
Albert Perera was already involved in the field of music at that time, having started broadcasting in 1943. He was also playing the violin under Master Gouse, an Indian musician who involved himself with the music scene in Ceylon. His violin playing impressed the master so much that he was invited to assist him with the music of the Sinhala film, Asokamala, which was screened in 1947. It was in the making of that film that Albert Perera made his first trip to India, as there were no film studios here at that time.
"Of course at that time, the influence of India on us was enormous. What I broadcast around that time were mostly Bengali songs with Sinhala Lyrics", recalls Amaradeva. Yet even in the pre-Indian period, Albert Perera had come up with songs like "Shantha me ra yame", and "Vandimu Sugata sakya sinha", giving a clue to what originality he had which will one day establish him as a great musician in this country. And just before he left for India, Professor Sarachchandra, the far sighted, told him "You will have much to offer this country when you come back. Everything should be done towards that end. A name goes a long way in this country. Change yours." And so Amaradeva was born.
It was to the Bathkande College of music at Lucknow that Amaradeva went in 1953. The principal of the college who had been to Sri Lanka to examine the musicians of Radio Ceylon the year before had himself categorized Amaradeva as a super grade artist, and was very willing to admit the young man and to exempt him from the first two years in his College. So in 1958, Amaradeva passed first in the merit list, getting Diplomas in both vocal and instrumental music.
Back home, Amaradeva was chosen to be a member of the first cultural delegation to India sent in 1959 by the new Ministry of Cultural Affairs. "For me that was a challenge. Soon after passing out from an Indian Institution, I had to go back there, representing music from my country." Yet Amaradeva had experience with the indigenous forms of music by that time too, since during a summer vacation in 1956, he had been involved with starting a radio programme on Janagayana folk songs with Madawela S. Ratnayake.
It was also in that journey that Amaradeva met a girl "who had a wonderful voice for folk poetry" who ended up being his wife and his closest companion from that time to now. Since their marriage in 1963, Wimala Amaradeva had always been by his side.
That fact that he is now hardly known as a good instrumentalist is, for Amaradeva a cause for sadness. "Vocal music dominates in Sri Lanka. This could be because we do not have a strong tradition of instrumental music in this country. Personally, I am of the opinion that instrumental music is the pure form. Songs would always be the applied or mixed form a mixture of literature and music."
For Amaradeva, it is not necessarily a good sign of the development of music in Sri Lanka, that people still have to learn to appreciate kinds of music other than songs. "It is not that songs are an inferior manifestation. A good song, with compatible words and music, could be eternal, as I think all good music should be. It too can create an emotion a particular nuance of feeling, that can be created by pure music. But instrumental music does not run the danger of being popular simply by being topical. Songs do. I feel that instrumental music is really the more sophisticated form."
When a popular and respected singer such as Amaradeva voices an opinion like this perhaps we should consider why it is that instrumental music has taken a backseat in Sri Lanka. Perhaps if all the media that is available to the people now makes instrumental music more accessible to them the situation might change for the better.
"The violin is after all my first love," laughs Amaradeva. And it is to pay his respect to the man who taught him the initial steps on that journey of love that Amaradeva went to India a few days ago.
Pundit Vishnu Govinda Jog has enjoyed the rare privilege of being a top performer in Indian classical music for a period of over forty years. Among the many awards that he has received for his violin playing is the "Padma Bhushan" conferred upon him in 1983 by the President of India.
Amaradeva's Guru
For
Amaradeva, it is an honour to be remembered at the time of his guru's 75th
birthday celebrations. He came under Pundit Jog's influence as soon as he
entered Bathkande College in 1953. A month after he joined however, Pundit Jog
left the college to take up the position of the Director of Music in Lucknow
for the All India Radio. Yet he continued to call some students home to help
them with their music. Amaradeva was one of them.
"There is something I remember about my guru, when I visited his home for the first time," Amaradeva recalls. "It was winter. And cold. I only had a cloth around my shoulders. When I sat in front of him, to learn, he looked at me for a while, took off his coat and put it around my shoulders. It was only after that, that he gave the violin to my hands."
Perhaps it is memories like these that make one of our foremost musicians take a long journey back to pay his respect to someone who helped him at the beginning. It takes a lot to create a great artiste. Often, as in Amaradeva's case, it takes many people too. It is always good to remember them.
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