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K. W. D.
Amaradeva
Sri Lanka
THE 2001
RAMON MAGSAYSAY AWARDEE FOR JOURNALISM,
LITERATURE, AND CREATIVE COMMUNICATION
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Where music is
concerned, no fine line can be drawn to separate Sri
Lanka from India and the rest of the world. In fact,
through the ages, all of Sri Lanka's fine arts evolved
as part of the Greater Indian Tradition. In modern times
new art forms came from the West, so that Portuguese
lullabies and Christian hymns joined North Indian ragas
and Buddhist chants as part of the island's musical
heritage. All the while, Sri Lanka's village folk
created songs and dances reflecting their own more
isolated lives.
So what,
exactly, is Sri Lankan music? This question began to
matter in 1948 when Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, emerged as
an independent nation. Happily, this is about the time
that K. W. D. Amaradeva began his musical career. For
many Sri Lankans, he has provided the
answer.
Born Albert
Perrera, Amaradeva came early to music. His father, a
carpenter, played the violin. By the age of seven, young
Albert was playing the violin too. He quickly mastered
the Bengali tunes then in vogue and from his older
brother learned the rudiments of the classical North
Indian raga. A prodigy, he became a star at local
recitals and gained early renown as a singer of Buddhist
devotional songs. By thirteen, he was performing on the
radio. By nineteen, he was playing the violin, singing,
and composing incidental music for the film "Asokamala."
Little wonder that he left school to pursue a life of
music.
Finding work
at Radio Ceylon, Perrera emerged as a brilliant
innovator in Sinhalese music and was soon welcomed into
the company of leading artists and intellectuals.
Sensing the young man's genius, some of them raised a
fund to send him to India for classical training. At the
Bhathkande Institute of Music in Lucknow, Perrera sat at
the feet of India's music masters and won first prize in
an all-India violin competition. He returned to Sri
Lanka in 1958 as Amaradeva, the name he would make
famous.
Issues of
national identity now preoccupied many Sri Lankans. In
the spirit of the times, Amaradeva began arranging and
performing indigenous folk songs, embellishing them with
Indian ragas and thus elevating them from simple tunes
to more sophisticated compositions. In other
innovations, he experimented with Western harmony and
counterpoint and with South Indian and Tamil musical
forms. With lyricist Mahagama Sekera, he explored ways
to wed the cadences of classical Sinhalese poetry to the
new music. In time, Amaradeva's music came to reflect an
entire spectrum of borrowed and indigenous influences, a
uniquely Sri Lankan synthesis.
A prodigious
creative artist, Amaradeva has composed music for
ballet, film, the stage, and countless radio and
television programs. He has written over one thousand
songs-melodious, lyrical, haunting songs of patriotism,
beauty, faith, passion, and love. For over fifty years
now he has also been performing his songs over radio and
television, in concert, and on gramophone records,
audiotapes, and CDs. Amaradeva's fluid, resonant voice
long ago overshadowed his violin. Today, Sri Lankans
need only turn on their radios to hear it daily. "He
sings so beautifully," says one admirer, "one has to
stop everything and listen."
Music, says
Pandith Amaradeva, "is the finest of the fine arts." His
music is both very fine and widely loved. Sri Lankans
say it is music that transcends ethnicity, class, and
age. Or as his friend Ediriweera Sarachchandra put it,
it is music that "speaks to the soul of the
nation."
In electing K.
W. D. Amaradeva to receive the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay
Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative
Communication Arts, the board of trustees recognizes his
life of dazzling creativity in expression of the rich
heritage and protean vitality of Sri Lankan
music. |
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