Amara Sara Arana - Articles

Amaradeva
Daily News Editorial - Thursday, 2 August 2001

Whatever might divide Sri Lanka's people during this period of intense political consciousness and debate, one thing which the whole country will rejoice over and will bring the people together is the announcement that Pandit W. D. Amaradeva, Sri Lanka's leading and much-adored musician and vocalist is to be awarded this year's Ramon Magsaysay Award which will be conferred on him on August 28 at a ceremony in Manila. For not only does this bring honour to Sri Lanka, but it also recognises the undoubted and spectacular talent of a man who has devoted his entire life to fostering an indigenous tradition of music in Sri Lanka. From his early days in the Colombo suburb of Moratuwa, famous for that favourite music of the middle-classes, the 'baila', 'Amaradeva's has been a long love affair with Saraswathi, the goddess of music and the arts in the Hindu pantheon. Neither was it a path strewn with roses which brought Amaradeva to the pinnacle of fame and achievement which he has now reached. He began as a violinist, a singer and a director of music for such early Sinhala films as 'Asokamala' (where he was assistant to Mohamed Ghouse) and only after this practical initiation into music did he proceed to India to receive a classical education at Bhathkande. That institute itself conferred the title of Pandit on him some years ago in recognition of his subsequent achievements while two years ago the University of Peradeniya conferred the honorary doctorate of literature on him. Amaradeva, then, has honed his skills at and achieved mastery of both ends of the musical spectrum. Beginning as a musician for the popular cinema he proceeded to arm himself with a comprehensive knowledge of the North Indian ragadhari tradition which is the womb from which the best Sinhala music has emerged. He built on the patrimony left behind by the best of the early musicians such as Ananda Samarakoon, Deva Suryasena, Suryashankar Molligoda and Sunil Shantha until almost single-handed he forged a distinctive Sinhala music tradition which is today enjoyed by all communities in Sri Lanka cutting across the ethnic barriers of a fragmented nation. This was no easy task. Amaradeva accomplished this onerous task by a creative and imaginative synthesis of the North Indian classical tradition with our own folk tradition which he refined to make of this combination a musical idiom which was uniquely his own. If Prof. Ediriweera Sarachchandra removed the crudities from the 'nadagam' tradition and made modern theatre of folk drama, Amaradeva did the same for Sinhala music. Not only is he Sri Lanka's leading male vocalist but he is also a composer not only of light music but also sustained pieces of music such as his score for Chitrasena's celebrated ballet 'Karadiya'. In this task Amaradeva drew sustenance from and was in turn sustained by several gifted lyric writers. Mahagamasekera, Madawala S. Ratnayake and Dalton de Alwis (all of them now dead), W. A. Abeysinghe, Sunil Sarath Perera and Ratnasiri Wijesinghe are names which come easily to mind. But Amaradeva's achievements are all his own and uniquely so. Blending the classical and the folk he was also sensitive to popular music and the changing tastes of a generation caught up and often vulgarised by rapid social and cultural change. Amaradeva never genuflected to the popular but he was influenced by popular culture and popular taste in shaping his music without either adulterating or vulgarising its remarkable quality. Let us then salute W. D. Amaradeva for not only bringing honour to Sri Lanka by his achievements, but also for giving utterance to a nation's soul.