• Music
    • Artists
    • Albums
    • Archives
  • Events
  • Sooriya Blog
  • Contact Us
  • About Us

amarasiri-peiris

Amarasiri Peiris: On the artiste and the audience

April 24, 2021 by shamilka
Amarasiri Peiris, Uditha Devapriya

Artistes have their views. They voice them from time to time. True, they come out less regularly than we’d want them to, but when they do they’re frank enough to call a spade a spade. The more humble among them, I believe, manage to concede their own inadequacies when indulging in this. Few do, yes, but mercifully they aren’t a minority. Being the veterans they are, they’ve traversed enough to realise that for all the shifts in time and aesthetic tastes, what they bequeathed to us survives and therefore, remains the standard by which we continue to judge and applaud them. Amarasiri Peiris, who remains frank and calls a spade a spade like most of his colleagues, has bequeathed much to us, going by that.

I first heard him, I remember, when I was 10. We were travelling to Colombo, back when Colombo was “far away” and visits to which warranted a song or two over the radio. The song was “Oba Apple Malak Wage”, which has since remained his signature for me for the simple reason that it sums up the man’s vocal texture and frankness. When I spoke with him the other day that was, of course, all there: he has mellowed and continues to mellow, but thankfully, I suspect, he retains that texture. Not surprisingly, he’s still at it here and abroad, and those who follow and fawn on him continue to do so in increasing numbers.

Amarasiri Peiris was born to a musical family. His father, Albert Peiris, had been a respectable figure at Radio Ceylon. “He knew almost all the celebrated figures in his field, including H. W. Rupasinghe. In fact ‘Rupasinghe Master’ was a regular visitor to our house, where he and my father would discuss and debate on music. I was witness to all this as a young boy. So I guess you can say I was tutored in music before I decided to strike out my own path.” Curiously and despite all this however, Albert didn’t want his son to opt for music. I ask him why. He smiles as he replies, “Back then the music industry was as lacking in opportunity as it is today. Perhaps my father sensed that, perhaps he didn’t, but in the end it was my mother who identified my penchant for music and encouraged it.”

He opted for music after he passed his O Levels. While doing his A Levels in the early sixties, he applied to the University of Visual and Performing Arts, back then known as Haywood College. “I was selected in 1963,” he remembers, “after which I had to go through a six year course. It wasn’t easy, considering that in those six years we were virtually debarred from seeking employment elsewhere, but in the end I managed to survive them.” The Principal at Haywood at the time was Lionel Edirisinghe, who despite his detractors today is fondly remembered by Amarasiri: “Our country owes him a great debt, in particular because it was because of him that we have a music form we can claim today. He also was responsible for creating a vast, veritable reserve of music teachers.”

Amarasiri would pass out in 1968, and a short while later, would be taken into Radio Ceylon by the then Chairman and Director-General, Neville Jayaweera. Initially taken in as an A-grade violinist, he would rise up to become a Conductor, Controller, and by the time he retired in 2005, Director of Music. His brush with radical politics would get him into trouble after 1977, and for three years he was without a job. “That was in the late eighties. During D. B. Wijetunga’s presidency, I was called back and was paid in full for those three years I’d been away.”

Neville Jayaweera

I ask him as to what he contributed during his time as an administrator in the SLBC. “Well, for one thing, I noticed that none of the programs in the Sinhala sevaya took our listeners beyond the jana gee and Oriental tradition. So I introduced programs on Western symphonies and operas. These were already played out in the English service, but Sinhala audiences didn’t really listen to that.” What of his fascination with Bach, Beethoven, and the Western tradition, then? “All that goes back to my days at Heywood, so when I was working in the SLBC I realised that if our audiences were to be discerning, they should be opened to the outside world. I believe that is what made me what I am today. We must appreciate everything, not just what we can claim as ours.”

His penchant for Western music also goes back to his first encounter with his biggest associate in later years, Premasiri Khemadasa. No biographical sketch of Amarasiri would be complete without mentioning Khemadasa, so I ask him about the man. He predictably becomes more eager and opens his heart. While spatial constraints prevent me from quoting him completely, I will say this: he sees Khemadasa not as a guru but as a grand collaborator, who instilled in him an appreciation of his field. “I was a virtual experiment for him,” he laughs, “My first song was ‘Landune’. He took my voice and varied it, and despite certain reservations expressed by some of his associates, he never stopped using me thereafter.”

Khemadasa
Khemadasa

At a time when most veterans are wont to disparaging and critiquing modernity, Amarasiri is refreshingly more lenient. For starters, he doesn’t see deterioration in lyricists today. It is a sign of the man’s humility that far from trashing them, he rates them more highly than many of those he worked with in his time. I ask him why, piqued and puzzled as I am, and he readily explains.

“In my day we collaborated when we composed, wrote, and performed a song. In later years, for some strange reason, that spirit of collaboration was superseded by an unnecessary fight for ownership and bragging rights. I will not mention names here, but certain lyricists, composers, and relatives thereof have sent me letters of demand and have forced me to stop singing their songs. I would have appreciated it had they opted for negotiation, but due to their hostility I can only conclude that time has swelled their heads and made them forget their roots. I don’t see this with today’s lyricists. They are thankfully more discerning. And humble.”

He rattles off a list of those lyricists he’s worked with recently, in particular Danister Perera and Dhammika Bandara, and concludes with a flourish: “Before we become artistes we must become human. These youngsters have realised this more than their elders. Tells a lot about our music industry.”

Dammika Bandara

Given his unfortunate encounters with those same elders, who does he think owns a song? “It depends on where it’s placed. If it’s in a film, it belongs to the producer. If it’s standalone, according to the law, the lyricist and composer claim ownership while the singer claims performance rights. The problem here is that I’ve been debarred from those rights on the pretext that by claiming them I am violating the rights of the lyricist and composer!” A tragic Catch-22 dilemma, no doubt. And the end result? “I don’t sing those songs anymore. Not because I can’t, but because I’m hurt by how hostile these people have become.”

While praising modernity however, he isn’t one to commend it blindly. Among its demerits, he cites the discernible confusion between form and content sustained by today’s singers. “Look at Michael Jackson. He sang about love, mankind, and this world we live in. He sang with enough meaning to make us aware about the message he was bringing up. Compare that with those here who try to imitate the way he walked and danced without giving a damn about his message. These imitators have misunderstood form for substance and pretty much done away with the latter.”

All this of course offers much for reflection. Amarasiri Peiris has reflected well. I remember no less a figure than Carlo Fonseka, who collaborated with him over the song “Yanna Giya We” (which sounds like a dirge on lost love but is actually about a lost pet bird), paying tribute to his voice, “as enchanting as it is and as strangely mystical as it seems” (his words to me, from three years back). The good Professor got it right there, I believe. The man’s two biggest assets, his vocal texture and his dexterity with both Western and Eastern musical forms, have hence marked him out well.

Carlo Fonseka

Speaking strictly for myself, I am yet to come across a vocalist here who’s capable of the range of emotion and experience he’s dipped into all his life. He has that rare ability to elongate or shorten whatever he sings, which (and I am being simple here, given that I am no musicologist) articulates emotion and in particular, loss, unrequited love, grief, frustration, and sorrow acutely. I am reminded of those few lines in “Minisa Marana Thunak”, which sum up Anoja Weerasinghe’s feelings of jealousy and frustration in Parakrama Niriella’s film Siri Medura: “ලිහිල් සළුව අනතුරේ වැටෙද්දී / පයෝධර තුඩු ඉකිබිඳිද්දී.” That no other person could have articulated the sexual nuances of those lines, or for that matter the raw, almost savage image wrought by them, we don’t doubt. And we shouldn’t.

Written for: Ceylon Today LITE, September 4 2016

Posted by Uditha Devapriya

Share this knowledge with your friends…

How do you feel about this article…

You did not forsake us there where the Yoda Ela bends

April 6, 2018 by admin
Amarasiri Peiris, Gunadasa Kapuge, Malinda Seneviratne, Malini Jayaratne, Ranbanda Seneviratne, Sarachchandra, Sinhabahu, T. M. Jayaratne

Remembering Ranbanda Seneviratne

There is a song written by Malini Jayaratne which her husband, T. M. Jayaratne sings. It makes the poignant statement that not enough songs have been written about the love a father has for his child: piya senehasata kav gee liya una madi (there’s a conspicuous absence of songs dedicated to fathers’ love). True. There are countless mau guna gee (songs in praise of mother and motherhood) in Sinhala where the virtues of motherhood and the particularly sacred love of a mother are celebrated. Little of the father, even though Sarachchandra in a postscript to the father-son denouement in Sinhabahu, says it better than most.

Malini Jayaratne’s song ends like this: amma varun pamanada mathu budu vanne (is it that only mothers are marked for Buddhahood?). Among the countless songs about the mother there are a few which stand out for capturing in a recognisable idiom that which most of us know intimately, the first truths we become cognisant of: the warm refuge and unconditional love of a mother. To me Ranbanda Seneviratne’s davasak pela nethi hene (sung by Gunadasa Kapuge) stands among the finest tributes to a mother’s love.

He claims that even as his wife’s love wafted away (birindakage senehe giya yoda ele nemme), he felt again and again the fragrance of his mother’s tenderness (obe senehasa suwanda didee denuna mata amme). And he asks (well knowing the answer) if she will be by the gate would he were to flee the stormy insults raging in the city, abandoning his crown as he runs to her.

Like most people, I have known Ranbanda Seneviratne only through his lyrics. He was not a prolific lyricist but whatever he wrote had the rare quality of clinging on, decorating our sensibilities as they mature over time. He would be the first to admit, I am sure, that the composition and the voice are as important as the words and their arrangement. Still, there is something about the man, as discovered through his lyrics, that touched, a quality which made a deep indent in the normal course of diurnal pursuits on December 5th, when I heard that he had passed away.

He was by profession a lawyer and by all accounts one with a racy turn of speech. He appeared for famed skyjacker Sepala Ekanayake and defended those accused in the forged ration book case in the early eighties. I am sure he would have won many friends and admirers during the course of performing his professional duties, but again it was through his “stage presence” over visual and audio media that he became our friend.

Apart from the song alluded to above (which by the way helped propel Gunadasa Kapuge to stardom), there are three others which mark him as a song-writer who drew deep from our soil, a task which only those who have not slashed away their roots can accomplish: ula leno, sumano (both sung by Kapuge) and veedi sarana landune (by Amarasiri Peiris). The haunting melody in ula leno certainly enhances the theme of solitude, but it is from the lyrical genius of the poet that the song soars and settles deep in our hearts. Sumano speaks about personal loss, the death of the girl Sumana. Ranbanda draws a melancholic brush over the entire landscape he describes and invites us to reflect as though the loss is ours not his.

Mala hiru eliyen kokku giyado

Mihintala gala peththe

Piruvata enda pettiyaka thiyala

Pan dekaka eli medde

Madatiya veteddi handa kelathena ela

Edande ismatte

Sumano…. numba ey neththe

(Did the storks take wing over Mihintale in the twilight?

Draped in white cradeled between the light of two lamps in a coffin you lie

Below the edanda the moon wavers as madatiya seeds fall upon the ela,

Sumano…why are you not here?)

Ranbanda hails from Mihintale. There are probably many instances and incidents which stand witness to the fact that he never lost touch with his village and everything the word gama entails. To me, the idiomatic usage of language says all. I have met others from similar backgrounds who not only turned their backs on their history and heritage but went as far as attacking these things virulently, sometimes taking cover behind academic “imperatives”.

For most people, cultural roots comprise a thorny crown which has to be done away with as soon as possible. Ranbanda lived differently. He thought differently. Today, no one wants to be called Banda, they would go instead for Bandara, the former having been bestowed with all kinds of derogatory meanings over the years. Few Bandas carry their names with pride, M. D. Banda being a rare exception.

Ranbanda Seneviratne went further. He called himself a bayya from Mihintale and did so with a great sense of pride. This bayya unlike most who are ashamed of their bayya past, was well read and familiar with the cultural and literary traditions from all corners of the world. I believe he was able to absorb their richness so well only because he was comfortable with who he was. And this is also why he, even in his limited output, could emerge as a poet who had a personal lyrical signature, evident both in these songs as well as his one collection, “dukata kiyana kavi“.

Veedi Sarana Landune, as the title suggests is a meditation about a prostitute and the double standards applied by society in general to castigate them. In the following lines Ranbanda unequivocally makes clear his political position with respect to such women: “Lema pamanak lovata penena, laya nopenena landune; kuhumbuvekuta varadak nethi, varadakara landune” (Girl, whose breasts are naked to the world but whose heart remains unseen; girl, who wouldn’t hurt an ant, but is always at fault”!).

My colleague Prabath Sahabandu likened Ranbanda to a handloom cloth, “its beauty and character lies in its coarseness” and of course in the cultural idiom woven into it. He was clearly a man who felt deeply about social injustice. Remarking on the changes that have occurred in our society, he had once said, “There was a time when a dog lying dead on the road would attract a crowd of around 50 people; Today if fifty people lay dead on the road, not a dog would come by to take a look”.

Our people have had akala maha vehi (off-season thunderstorms) raining on them for far too long. We have not been blessed with many who could shelter us from these downpours until the rain ceased. Ranbanda has done his best. He wanted his last rites to be performed in Anuradhapura as one would expect. If his “remains” stir the discontent in our hearts and unsettle us enough to agitate for our own personal Mihintales, he would live long and his spirit would find rest once more.

Ratna Sri Wijesinghe in a glowing tribute to the man, refers to a poem titled kageda me le pellama(Whose are these blood stains?), quoting the following:

Whose are these blood stains,

A man’s? a beast’s?

Whose is this shirt, torn and riddled with holes?

Was there a scream, sobs, pleading not to kill?

Who knows, dear god,

Whoever it was, was it not a man

Who lay there bleeding?

That man is still bleeding. That man comes from a village, is conscious and proud of his heritage, recognises his father and mother and is recognisable from the hordes who are valiantly divesting themselves of their identity. Ranbanda Seneviratne identified the worth of this man. It is the generational task of our times to stop the bleeding.

by Malinda Seneviratne

amarasirip

Amarasiri Peiris: On the artiste and the audience

November 10, 2016 by admin
Amarasiri Peiris, Uditha Devapriya

Amarasiri Peiris[Pic by pinthaliya.wordpress.com]

Artistes have their views. They voice them from time to time. True, they come out less regularly than we’d want them to, but when they do they’re frank enough to call a spade a spade. The more humble among them, I believe, manage to concede their own inadequacies when indulging in this. Few do, yes, but mercifully they aren’t a minority. Being the veterans they are, they’ve traversed enough to realise that for all the shifts in time and aesthetic tastes, what they bequeathed to us survives and therefore, remains the standard by which we continue to judge and applaud them. Amarasiri Peiris, who remains frank and calls a spade a spade like most of his colleagues, has bequeathed much to us, going by that.

I first heard him, I remember, when I was 10. We were travelling to Colombo, back when Colombo was “far away” and visits to which warranted a song or two over the radio. The song was “Oba Apple Malak Wage”, which has since remained his signature for me for the simple reason that it sums up the man’s vocal texture and frankness. When I spoke with him the other day that was, of course, all there: he has mellowed and continues to mellow, but thankfully, I suspect, he retains that texture. Not surprisingly, he’s still at it here and abroad, and those who follow and fawn on him continue to do so in increasing numbers.

Amarasiri Peiris was born to a musical family. His father, Albert Peiris, had been a respectable figure at Radio Ceylon. “He knew almost all the celebrated figures in his field, including H. W. Rupasinghe. In fact ‘Rupasinghe Master’ was a regular visitor to our house, where he and my father would discuss and debate on music. I was witness to all this as a young boy. So I guess you can say I was tutored in music before I decided to strike out my own path.” Curiously and despite all this however, Albert didn’t want his son to opt for music. I ask him why. He smiles as he replies, “Back then the music industry was as lacking in opportunity as it is today. Perhaps my father sensed that, perhaps he didn’t, but in the end it was my mother who identified my penchant for music and encouraged it.”

He opted for music after he passed his O Levels. While doing his A Levels in the early sixties, he applied to the University of Visual and Performing Arts, back then known as Haywood College. “I was selected in 1963,” he remembers, “after which I had to go through a six year course. It wasn’t easy, considering that in those six years we were virtually debarred from seeking employment elsewhere, but in the end I managed to survive them.” The Principal at Haywood at the time was Lionel Edirisinghe, who despite his detractors today is fondly remembered by Amarasiri: “Our country owes him a great debt, in particular because it was because of him that we have a music form we can claim today. He also was responsible for creating a vast, veritable reserve of music teachers.”

Amarasiri would pass out in 1968, and a short while later, would be taken into Radio Ceylon by the then Chairman and Director-General, Neville Jayaweera. Initially taken in as an A-grade violinist, he would rise up to become a Conductor, Controller, and by the time he retired in 2005, Director of Music. His brush with radical politics would get him into trouble after 1977, and for three years he was without a job. “That was in the late eighties. During D. B. Wijetunga’s presidency, I was called back and was paid in full for those three years I’d been away.”

I ask him as to what he contributed during his time as an administrator in the SLBC. “Well, for one thing, I noticed that none of the programs in the Sinhala sevaya took our listeners beyond the jana gee and Oriental tradition. So I introduced programs on Western symphonies and operas. These were already played out in the English service, but Sinhala audiences didn’t really listen to that.” What of his fascination with Bach, Beethoven, and the Western tradition, then? “All that goes back to my days at Heywood, so when I was working in the SLBC I realised that if our audiences were to be discerning, they should be opened to the outside world. I believe that is what made me what I am today. We must appreciate everything, not just what we can claim as ours.”

His penchant for Western music also goes back to his first encounter with his biggest associate in later years, Premasiri Khemadasa. No biographical sketch of Amarasiri would be complete without mentioning Khemadasa, so I ask him about the man. He predictably becomes more eager and opens his heart. While spatial constraints prevent me from quoting him completely, I will say this: he sees Khemadasa not as a guru but as a grand collaborator, who instilled in him an appreciation of his field. “I was a virtual experiment for him,” he laughs, “My first song was ‘Landune’. He took my voice and varied it, and despite certain reservations expressed by some of his associates, he never stopped using me thereafter.”

At a time when most veterans are wont to disparaging and critiquing modernity, Amarasiri is refreshingly more lenient. For starters, he doesn’t see deterioration in lyricists today. It is a sign of the man’s humility that far from trashing them, he rates them more highly than many of those he worked with in his time. I ask him why, piqued and puzzled as I am, and he readily explains.

“In my day we collaborated when we composed, wrote, and performed a song. In later years, for some strange reason, that spirit of collaboration was superseded by an unnecessary fight for ownership and bragging rights. I will not mention names here, but certain lyricists, composers, and relatives thereof have sent me letters of demand and have forced me to stop singing their songs. I would have appreciated it had they opted for negotiation, but due to their hostility I can only conclude that time has swelled their heads and made them forget their roots. I don’t see this with today’s lyricists. They are thankfully more discerning. And humble.”

He rattles off a list of those lyricists he’s worked with recently, in particular Danister Perera and Dhammika Bandara, and concludes with a flourish: “Before we become artistes we must become human. These youngsters have realised this more than their elders. Tells a lot about our music industry.”

Given his unfortunate encounters with those same elders, who does he think owns a song? “It depends on where it’s placed. If it’s in a film, it belongs to the producer. If it’s standalone, according to the law, the lyricist and composer claim ownership while the singer claims performance rights. The problem here is that I’ve been debarred from those rights on the pretext that by claiming them I am violating the rights of the lyricist and composer!” A tragic Catch-22 dilemma, no doubt. And the end result? “I don’t sing those songs anymore. Not because I can’t, but because I’m hurt by how hostile these people have become.”

While praising modernity however, he isn’t one to commend it blindly. Among its demerits, he cites the discernible confusion between form and content sustained by today’s singers. “Look at Michael Jackson. He sang about love, mankind, and this world we live in. He sang with enough meaning to make us aware about the message he was bringing up. Compare that with those here who try to imitate the way he walked and danced without giving a damn about his message. These imitators have misunderstood form for substance and pretty much done away with the latter.”

All this of course offers much for reflection. Amarasiri Peiris has reflected well. I remember no less a figure than Carlo Fonseka, who collaborated with him over the song ‘Yanna Giya We’ (which sounds like a dirge on lost love but is actually about a lost pet bird), paying tribute to his voice, “as enchanting as it is and as strangely mystical as it seems” (his words to me, from three years back). The good Professor got it right there, I believe. The man’s two biggest assets, his vocal texture and his dexterity in both Western and Eastern musical forms, have hence marked him out well.

Speaking strictly for myself, I am yet to come across a vocalist here who’s capable of the range of emotion and experience he’s dipped into all his life. He has that rare ability to articulate emotion and in particular, loss, unrequited love, grief, frustration, and sorrow acutely. I am reminded of those few lines in “Minisa Marana Thunak”, which sum up Anoja Weerasinghe’s feelings of jealousy and frustration in Parakrama Niriella’s film Siri Medura: “ලිහිල් සළුව අනතුරේ වැටෙද්දී / පයෝධර තුඩු ඉකිබිඳිද්දී.” That no other person could have articulated the sexual nuances of those lines, or for that matter the raw, almost savage image wrought by them, we don’t doubt. And we shouldn’t.

By Uditha Devapriya

Search blog posts

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content

Recent Posts

  • Punya Heendeniya and the cinema of femininity

    Punya Heendeniya and the cinema of femininity

    August 7, 2022
  • සරත් දසනායක ගී මධු කුසලානය – 02

    සරත් දසනායක ගී මධු කුසලානය – 02

    July 24, 2022
  • Tribute to Wally Bastiansz

    Tribute to Wally Bastiansz

    July 10, 2022
  • පී එල් ඒ සෝමපාල සිනමා ගී ඔවිල්ල

    පී එල් ඒ සෝමපාල සිනමා ගී ඔවිල්ල

    July 3, 2022
  • From Actor to Director

    From Actor to Director

    June 26, 2022

Categories

  • Feature
  • Memories
  • Sinhala
  • Trivia
  • මතකයන්
  • විශේෂාංග

Newsletter

Grab our Monthly Newsletter and stay tuned

Follow Us

 
 
 
 
 

Copyright © 2021 Sooriya Records –  All Rights Reserved