Category: Features

The Sri Lankan Western music industry has the tendency to periodically give birth to icons. They enter the music scene, make a mark with their unique brand of music and live in our hearts forever. Even for those of us who were born long after the golden ages of the 50s, 60s and 70s, names like the Peter Prins Combo, Sam the Man, Cosmic Rays and the Jetliners are names that were a constant when the families got together over the holidays. Then came the electric 80s that gave birth to Rattlesnake, the Gypsies and Sohan & the Experiments. Who can forget the elaborate costumes worn by Noeline, Judy, Sunil and Piyal and of course “This Land Belongs to Me” performed by Gypsies and the All Stars?

At the turn of the millennium four talented musicians formed another such iconic band that would once again revolutionize the Western music industry in Sri Lanka. They were called “Wildfire” and they started off playing at the Jaic Hilton on Sunday evenings. Starting off as a band performing music of the 60’s up to the present their repertoire included The Beatles, CCR, The Hollies, Simon and Garfunkel and James Taylor to name a few. But there was something unique about the combination of voices and the magic of the instruments that soon had people asking for more. “As we got popular among the local music lovers we added variety by covering songs of The Eagles, Doobie Brothers, REM, Nirvana and many more” reminisces the band as we sit down at Sooriya Village (what better place to interview musicians than here right!) with Derek, CJ, Shafi and Nilantha 17 years later.

A truly unique outfit “Wildfire” since its inception has gained a loyal following that has stayed with the band throughout the years. “All the members of the band sing and play various instruments such as guitar, bass, drums, percussion, harmonica, mandolin, accordion and whatever instrument they we could get our hands on. When we put all of that together there is magic that is created,” says CJ.

Despite having disbanded a few years ago and played with other outfits both locally and globally, the four guys collectively tell me that there was nothing quite like the “chemistry” that was Wildfire. “When we used to play together there was no competition or one person trying to outshine the other. We always gave each other the space to perform whether it was a drum solo or a bass piece. The fact that all of us could sing different genres of music also meant that together we had fans who loved different types of music”, says Shafi who has been performing with his band Gravity.

While Nilantha and CJ formed “Mintaka” post-Wildfire and performed together for 3-years playing soul, funk, blues and jazz music, Derek was globe-trotting in Switzerland, Portugal and Holland to name a few. “Although Mintaka was a completely different sound to what we were used to with Wildfire, Sri Lankan audiences were not prepared for something new”, says CJ who also notes that this is one reason why the Western music industry in Sri Lanka is so limited. “Most often at dances and weddings our audience will want the same set of songs which we obligingly perform but one of the greatest things for a musician is when you get an audience excited with a new piece. This excitement we used to see when we played at Clancy’s. We would start with our regulars and then someone from our loyal fans would request a completely out-of-the-box song and we would just go ahead. We believe this was one reason why people kept coming back week after week just to see us perform. Some of the guys became such regulars that eventually they became our friends”.

It is for these ardent fans and to create excitement once again in the music industry that Wildfire will regroup in mid-February for a stellar concert. Not limited to a one-night only, the band will also perform the Valentine’s Day Ball at Kingsbury, and thereafter every Wednesday at the Love Bar, Thursday and Friday at “The Hut” at Mount Lavinia Hotel and Saturday at the all-new Odel Boulevard.

Not limited to covering originals, “Wildfire” also wrote and composed (by CJ) the theme song for the ICC Champion’s Trophy in 2002 which they performed at the opening ceremony, wrote and composed (by Derek) the theme song for the Singer Schoolboy Rugby Tournament in 2004, and wrote and composed (by Derek) the theme song for the Indoor Cricket World Cup 2004. They also composed and recorded songs for the movie “Mille Soya” which was directed by Boodee Kirthisena.

“There is much excitement and anticipation in Colombo about our reunion. A picture of the four of us together Shafi posted was enough for the fires to get started, and we can’t wait for the day when we set the stage ablaze once again”, says the band.

For those of us who don’t quite digest the “electronic” vibe that is music today, we can’t wait either!

There’s nothing quite like the smile on a child’s face, yet many amongst us are deprived of this simple curve that in an instant has the power to make life better. We talk so much about children’s rights that include the right to health, education, family life, play and recreation, but sometimes all a little one needs is a smile.

Vivek Jayasuriya and his family understand the importance of simple acts. If you were to speak to any one of the brothers in this family, they would tell you how for as long as they can remember their parents have been teaching them and inculcating the value of giving back to those in need. It was perhaps this value and an encounter for Vivek with the dire needs of thousands if not millions of children around him that birthed the “SMILE Sri Lanka Foundation in 2009”. Armed with a mission and vision “to help the less fortunate and/or orphaned youth of the country by equipping them with the necessary knowledge, skills and ability to succeed in the future”, Vivek first started out in order to give children a brighter future by means of providing them with education, leisure events and financial support.

Since then the foundation itself has grown from immediate and extended family, close friends to friends of friends.

Apart from the programmes put together by the SMILE team over the years to provide education and counseling to street children, orphans and children at various children’s homes, one of the most ambitious and significant events has been the annual “SMILE Sri Lanka Carnival” which is held every year during Christmas time in an attempt to spread the joy, love and happiness of the season.

The first carnival in 2009 started with just 250 kids, and by the time the fifth year came calling that number had risen to a 1,000 street kids and orphans. Last year on December 11^th more than 2,500 children gathered at the Mount Park for a day they wait so eagerly for throughout the years.

Such a magnanimous task involves the time, effort, money and gracious hearts of volunteers who for the last few years have given their all. From logistics and obtaining permissions to finding funding both locally and internationally, a team of young people who speak different languages and come from different walks of life, unite for a common cause. The cause has grown so much that there are those that even fly down to Sri Lanka every year just to be a part of it.

Most of the hard labour starts a few days before the carnival when 3,000 gifts this year had to be sorted and packed. In what was truly a collaborated effort, families and friends get together for the first part of the fun, making “production lines” and dividing tasks among them. Once the gifts are all packed Vivek and his team visit several areas in Colombo where living conditions are at its worst and invite children and their parents to attend the carnival.

On D-day this year more than 200 volunteers turned up to ensure that all goes well. With free food, drinks, ice-cream, popcorn and candy floss for everyone, games and rides to enjoy, it is no easy task. Yet there really is no word to describe the joy when the children walk in with wide-eyed wonder and smiles that link ear-to-ear.

This year like all others saw many local celebrities join in to perform and bring added fun and activities to the children. Many of the children had travelled from all corners of the island just for this day. The most anticipated visitor this year was Santa who made a spectacular entrance on top of a fire truck, even getting his balloons caught up in some wires in his excitement to reach the children who so eagerly waited for his arrival.

This year Vivek hopes to extend the same excitement to children all over the nation by taking the SMILE carnival out of Colombo. If you wish to find out more information on how to collaborate or volunteer, everything you need to know is on their website www.smilefoundationsrilanka.com

At the end of the day, if you were a volunteer at the carnival, you like me will have no feeling in your feet, no voice left to even say goodbye to friends that you just met, but it will all be worth it. And it is all because a it only cost you one smile for a thousand in return.

By Uditha Devapriya

Directors are neither demagogues nor ivory towers. The worst of them tend to take to the commercial sector, but that does not and will not absolve the few who take the deterioration that results from this as a license to shut themselves up in academia and throw out arty flicks that, while critically well received, alienate their audience. I am no fan of those who intellectualise the cinema. Rehan Mudannayake, fortunately for me, is no fan of them either.

 This is his story.

Early life and childhood

He was educated at Elizabeth Moir in Colombo and later at Worth Abbey School in England. In both schools, he derived a love for art that would stay. Predictably, it stayed with him even when he entered the University of Kent, to study film for three years, and the University of Amsterdam, to study not just film but also literature, drama, and musicology. Apparently jazz was one of the subjects he had to study in the latter stream, which he remembers with some justifiable fondness.

In 2012 he left Europe and came back to Sri Lanka. When asked as to why he did so, he replies, “Purely and simply, the desire to make movies in my own country.” He qualifies this: “Besides, I grew up on a diet of films here. So this is where I really began my career.”

What of England?

As for England, he qualifies his admiration for that country’s cinema: “England doesn’t have a vibrant film culture anymore. There’s hardly any continuity in the industry there, quite opposite to what’s happening across the Atlantic.”

What’s missing, he explains, is state support. “I remember David Cameron once publicly stating that all directors in the UK must strive to make more films like Harry Potter. He was probably offering justification for his government’s decision to abolish the UK Film Council. That’s absurd though, quite harrowingly. Forget the fact that not everyone can make or afford to make Harry Potter films. Where’s the youth going to be in the British film industry? I think not addressing this question, especially in the long term, will do more damage than anyone can imagine.”

The principles of the cinema

For his part, Rehan has stuck to principle. He is also eclectic. That is how he can talk about his fascination with Eisenstein and the Russians, Godard and the French, and Spielberg and the Americans with equal vigour and fascination.

“Point is, we can’t really inflate ourselves and think that what we love as film-styles are the best. We need to learn as many of them as we can,” he says, “Which brings me to my second point: if cinema is NOT to remain as a minority art, we need to go beyond a crowd mentality.”

What of his work?

One of his first attempts was a short called Insecxtual, made about three years back and nominated for the top prize at the Mosaic Film Festival in Toronto. Elephant (an adaptation of an Ashok Ferrey short story), was not really a follow-up in that it explored new themes, best left to be discerned by the filmgoer and not revealed by the critic.

The film was, if my memory is correct, screened twice here last year. I missed watching it on both occasions, the first owing to an unfortunate illness and the second owing to another unfortunate illness. From what I have heard, however, I can say this much: Rehan has tried to probe into the fears, anxieties, and aspirations of the Colombo bourgeoisie.

His second film, Ladies Night, was premiered at the Lionel Wendt Arts Centre on Thursday, December 8 last year. The cast, which included Arun Welandawe-Prematilleke, Kinita Shenoy, Lasantha David, Sakshin Haran, Savera Weerasinghe, Vindhya Fernando, and Savithri Rodrigo, were (typically) quite young.

Ladies Night is relatively short. I believe the plot tells it all: “A regular Wednesday night out in Colombo amongst three friends – Fiona, Rajinda, and Sulaiman – takes a twisted turn when they are paid a visit by an unsavoury visitor. A dark, fast-paced short film, Ladies Night is the story of a disturbed man who obsessively stalks and harasses his ex-girlfriend.” I asked Rehan to elaborate on this without revealing spoilers, and in one go (well, almost) he summed it all up: “We live in a society that shuts out the most basic flaws that beset us.”

I sense that the same themes embedded in his previous work comes out here as well, and I am not wrong: in particular, our inability to recognise social ills when they confront us, and how, despite the contextualised plot of the film (as I mentioned, it delves into the lives of the Colombo elite), this trait of ours is relevant to the rest of our small country. I put this to Rehan, who agrees almost at once: “Yes, it’s rooted in a particular milieu. But then that doesn’t belittle its relevance to the many other communities resident elsewhere.”

Final words

I suppose the subject of any article deserves the last word. Here’s what Rehan has to say, hence: “We need to stop the cinema from being institutionalised. For this, we must seek cooperation from critics who know what they’re writing about and audiences who appreciate films for what they are. We need truly independent directors. But will we ever get them? That is my question for you.”

By Arun Dias Bandaranaike

Sri Lanka is ‘old’, (even though the use of the name ‘Sri Lanka’ itself dates no earlier than forty-four years ago), with a history of some millennia. Has there been an Art Market here, or has there been a ‘market for Art’? The two expressions are not the same, are they?

If (as believed) the ‘first Kingdom’ was located in the north central plains of the island’s dry zone with its capital in Anuradhapura, more than two thousand years ago, whatever remains of the ancient city today betrays a serious and sustained attempt to include art and sculpture in the fabric of life in general.  Even though the focus of the kingdom seems to have rested on the twin fulcrum of religion and agrarian pursuits, the royal patronage granted to creative works of art and design was palpable.

Those artisans who were responsible for what we still discern, rather dimly, in the Sigiriya area, and, in the designs that were executed in the construction of palaces, places of worship and ritual, or even inside decorated caves, were never acknowledged in any literature. Persons unnamed accomplished much, whether slight or consequential, in terms of quality and craftsmanship.  All was done for the glory of the king and the kingdom. There appears to have been a ‘market for Art’, even though the creators thereof are anonymous.

Thanks to the efforts of the late Dr. Senarath Paranavitane, the graffiti that adorns the mirror-wall in Sigiriya can be comprehended today some hundreds of years after they were etched on that plaster. Those comments, and some as poetry, indicate that individuals who passed by were able to appreciate such art. They were touched by the depictions of the female form; they felt the very tremor of passion within their being, according to what is frankly admitted in some of those verses. Prof. Senake Dias Bandaranaike opines that figurines of clay depicting the same two dimensional images painted on the walls, were part of the ‘merchandise’ that visitors in the period of the Kandyan Kingdom could obtain, if they were desirous of taking with them a three dimensional ‘memento’ of their visit to the enigmatic rock outcrop.  Clearly, art was accessible, even as people of any walk of life could pay obeisance at the different temples and complexes where religious art (some of the samples are purely decorative and beautifully designed and in fine taste and may have had no symbolic reference) was compellingly present.

In the modern times and during much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, aside from the religious art, which still remained to be seen and admired in far-flung places, the market for art has become largely an elitist preserve. The European styles and works of those masters from such climes were obtained in prints and adorned the homes of people who were able to ‘identify’ with them. In the middle of the twentieth century, a national consciousness was awoken among the artists in Ceylon. One of several prime ‘movers’ in this direction was George Keyt of Kandy.

For almost two and a half decades, The George Keyt Foundation has democratised the market for art, by organising an ‘art market’ with a view to identifying and promoting indigenous talent within the island. No more are the creators anonymous, rather, the emphasis is very much on making people aware of these gifted persons, inviting the general public to engage with and respond immediately to what they do and are trying to convey via their imagination and expression thereof.

The Foundation has benefited from the largesse and active event organisation and sponsorship of John Keells Foundation, which by its very nature of being a CSR venture, are able to match the resolve of The George Keyt Foundation in assisting yet not widely known artists to be presented in the right context, and bringing the buyers to them. These interested patrons purchase works that are on offer and which are brought to the venue in Colombo by the artists and sculptors themselves, from wherever in the country they originate. Hundreds of prospective artists and buyers have a capital opportunity to ‘meet’ and be known to each other.  What a wondrous idea this has been!  It was an idea that germinated, not in the mind of the late artist George Keyt, who earned renown all over the world from London, to Paris, to India, to Australia and so on; it was an idea conceived by Keyt’s very close friends Mr. and Mrs. Cedric de Silva.  Even to date, this couple maintain a vital and laudable interest in carrying on the good work ushered in so many years ago, with the permission of Keyt to have his name affixed to the Foundation, and, we can only imagine the joy that must reside within Cedric and Sita, in seeing, literally, hundreds of artists, using the annual “Kala Pola” as their “launch pad” in fulfilling their aspiration to be seen and known and not remain anonymous in some quiet forgotten corner of the country! (The writer is a Trustee of The George Keyt Foundation)

The 80s and 90s were, in my opinion, the best music had to offer the world. Sri Lanka hardly had much in the way of arts and entertainment during that period; the airwaves and Lankans as a whole were more occupied with suicide bombings and the price of bread. But for the youth that was stuck with hours that segued into days with boredom, there was music. As an 80s child growing up, I honestly can’t remember a music artist from Lanka that put English music first and foremost into the Western airwaves. Then there was Alston Koch. I remember grooving to It’s A Shame back in the day wearing neon shorts and Bata slippers, because you know, it was cool.

Slowly but surely Alston and his music disappeared as he made a home for himself in Australia, and the socio-economic climate evolved and changed. As music changed, and tastes evolved, priorities changed, and life went on, and Alston Koch became a distant but pleasant memory for me. So it was a trip down memory lane when I was invited to interview and chat with James Koch. James is the son of Sri Lankan-born Alston Koch — the multi award-winning singer-songwriter, record producer, actor and television star who migrated from Sri Lanka to Australia 45 years ago.

Surely children are supposed to follow in their fathers’ footsteps, yes? Well, music is not what James regards as a passion; instead he finds acting more to his liking. And he certainly looks the part. With a man bun of sorts, open white shirt, and clad in jeans, he looked the typical bohemian suffering through scripts desiring to flesh everything out realistically for his audience.

Not too eager to open up about his achievements and accomplishments, I realized that I had to do some digging of my own. Many a Lankan denizen would have seen the movie A Common Man, which was released in 2013. James scored his break in this major Hollywood film, which starred Ben Cross and Ben Kingsley.  The film won a slew of awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor awards at the Madrid International Film Festival and bronze medal in the Feature Films category at the New York Festivals’ International Television and Film Awards.

At present, James has signed with the Prestige Talent Agency in Beverly Hills, and will be starring in Impact Earth, The Queen Of The Golden Triangle, in addition to a few more movies. Yet while we have established that James surely is an up and coming actor that already has tasted the best of what Hollywood has to offer, justice would not be done if we don’t allow James to speak and tell us of his hopes, dreams, and future plans.

Like any good kid, James started life off by studying very hard: he graduated with a double degree from the Monash University and was well-versed in Studied Computer Science and also majored in Linguistics in Japanese. Thereafter, he went to Japan on scholarship where he immersed himself in Japanese culture. It’s probably the pride and honor that your average Japanese citizen places in the work that they do that resonated so heavily with James. It’s this same work ethic that he infuses his art with. When he came back to Australia, he worked at the Department of Defense. It’s at this juncture that the acting bug bit him, and he travelled to USA to begin his career as an actor.

Yet James is very much into writing and directing as well. Only James could eloquently craft an analogy of what an actor is — a paintbrush that a director could use to create a story. What better way can you live a thousand lives than to slip into an inspired role? Acting is something that gives James in his own words — “unadulterated joy”. So what’s the future looking like for him? Well, he’s working on an adventure story, which is a collaboration with his father, that he selfishly liked to keep under wraps despite my ardent inquiries to get more information. Although he did suggest — with a twinkle in his eye — that there were some well-known names attached to the project.

Although, I was entertained by a James who was lively as he was jovial, and I did wrongly assume that he would enjoy playing comedic roles, however, that was a very wrong assumption. For him, it’s the action flicks that gets him in his element. For instance, the type of action that A Common Man was riddled with is the exact type of role, which James can easily blend in with. One thing we both had in common was the shared love for Monkey Magic — a Japanese television drama based on the Chinese novel, Journey to the West, by Wu Cheng’en — that ran in the early 1980s, Star Wars, Aliens, and Battlestar Galactica.

With so much of opportunity beckoning him, he did leave me with a snippet of wisdom: you really should enjoy what you do, because this is real life, and we owe it to ourselves to experience every single emotion possible. And once you do experience all these singular emotions or a blend of all can you confidently state that you have lived.