[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":200},["ShallowReactive",2],{"person-en-athma-liyanage":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"artistId":6,"birthYear":7,"body":8,"born":7,"description":169,"died":7,"era":170,"extension":171,"heroImage":172,"imageCredit":173,"imageLicense":174,"imageSource":175,"meta":176,"navigation":177,"notable":178,"path":179,"roles":180,"seo":184,"sources":185,"stem":198,"translated":177,"url":188,"__hash__":199},"peopleEn\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fathma-liyanage.md","Athma Liyanage",14,null,{"type":9,"value":10,"toc":161},"minimark",[11,20,23,28,46,52,56,101,126,130,133,145,149,152,155,158],[12,13,14,15,19],"p",{},"The album was called ",[16,17,18],"em",{},"Liyathambara One Man Orchestra",", and the second half of the title was not a boast. It was a description of the production budget. In 1989 a Sri Lankan singer could not easily afford a studio band, but he could afford a keyboard — and on the electronic keyboards of that moment, one player with patience could lay down strings, bass, brass, flute and drums in sequence and end up with something that sounded, on a cassette played through a bus speaker, close enough to an orchestra.",[12,21,22],{},"Athma Liyanage made that record, and the title track outlived almost everything else released that year.",[24,25,27],"h2",{"id":26},"liyathambara","Liyathambara",[12,29,30,34,35,37,38,41,42,45],{},[31,32,33],"strong",{},"ලියතඹරා"," ",[16,36,27],{}," opens by naming a woman and immediately overstating her, in the way Sinhala love lyrics have always been allowed to: ",[16,39,40],{},"ලියතඹරා මුදු කුසුමකි ඈ"," — \"Liyathambara, she is a soft blossom\" — one who breaks the composure of ascetics in meditation. The verses that follow turn on themselves. She is the sweet note rising from the strings of a ",[16,43,44],{},"veena","; she is also a mirage, a horizon with no edge, a cup of poison handed over as wine. It is a song about being deceived, sung at the pace of a lullaby.",[12,47,48,49,51],{},"That combination — a gentle, keyboard-cushioned arrangement carrying a lyric about betrayal — was very much the sound of the late Sinhala cassette era, and ",[16,50,27],{}," is one of its defining records. Released in 1989, it made him popular through the early 1990s.",[24,53,55],{"id":54},"the-rest-of-the-catalogue","The rest of the catalogue",[12,57,58,59,34,62,65,66,34,69,72,73,34,76,79,80,34,83,86,87,34,90,93,94,34,97,100],{},"His other well-known songs are ",[31,60,61],{},"එපා කඳුලැල් සලා",[16,63,64],{},"Epa Kandulel Sala"," (\"don't shed those tears\"), also from 1989, and ",[31,67,68],{},"කඳු පාමුල සිට",[16,70,71],{},"Kandu Pamula Sita"," (\"from the foot of the mountains\"). Sinhala song indexes credit him with a good deal more: ",[31,74,75],{},"සංසාර ආදරේ",[16,77,78],{},"Sansara Adare"," (\"love across lifetimes\"), ",[31,81,82],{},"සිහින ලොවේ",[16,84,85],{},"Sihina Lowe"," (\"in the world of dreams\"), ",[31,88,89],{},"සමනලියා මනලොලියා",[16,91,92],{},"Samanaliya Manaloliya"," (\"butterfly, heart's delight\"), ",[31,95,96],{},"රෑ අහසේ තරු කැට පායා දිලුනා",[16,98,99],{},"Re Ahase Tharu Keta Paya Diluna"," (\"stars came out and shone in the night sky\").",[12,102,103,104,34,107,110,111,34,114,117,118,121,122,125],{},"Then a long quiet stretch, and then, in 2011, two new songs: ",[31,105,106],{},"ආයෙමත් ආදරෙන්",[16,108,109],{},"Ayemath Adaren"," (\"in love again\") and ",[31,112,113],{},"සිත දුර හඳ",[16,115,116],{},"Sitha Dura Handa"," (\"the heart, the distant moon\"). ",[16,119,120],{},"Na Thawath Hithak"," followed in 2015 and ",[16,123,124],{},"Ahimi Nethu Aga"," in 2016.",[24,127,129],{"id":128},"coming-back","Coming back",[12,131,132],{},"The second act is the genuinely unusual thing about him. A great many Sinhala singers who were big on cassette in the late 1980s spent the next thirty years playing to the same audience, growing older together. Very few picked up a new one.",[12,134,135,136,138,139,141,142,144],{},"Athma Liyanage did. ",[16,137,109],{}," and ",[16,140,116],{}," landed with listeners born long after ",[16,143,27],{},", in the era of YouTube and ringtones rather than cassettes, and they are now as likely to be what a younger Sri Lankan knows him for. He is credited on both occasions with writing as well as singing — the same one-man method, twenty-two years apart.",[24,146,148],{"id":147},"what-is-not-known","What is not known",[12,150,151],{},"This is a short article because the sources are short, and it is more useful to say so than to fill the gap.",[12,153,154],{},"His birth year is not recorded in any source found. Sinhala and English references agree only that his birthday falls on 1 June, and Wikipedia files him under \"year of birth missing\". He is generally associated with the Kalutara district. Nothing reliable was found about his schooling, his training, how he came to make the 1989 album, who released it, or what he was doing in the two decades between 1989 and 2011.",[12,156,157],{},"The English and Sinhala encyclopedia entries on him rest on two references: a Sri Lanka Singers Association artist page that no longer resolves, and a 2013 interview on a gossip site. Neither is the kind of source this site would ordinarily build on. The songs themselves are well attested — they are indexed, catalogued and still played — but the life behind them is, at present, undocumented in anything reachable.",[12,159,160],{},"Somebody has certainly interviewed him at length; Sinhala newspapers of the 1990s and 2000s ran features on every cassette-era singer of his standing. Those pages exist in the Lankadeepa and Sarasaviya archives, which are not open to the sort of searching that produced this article. Until someone reads them, an honest entry on Athma Liyanage is a description of a body of work with a person-shaped hole in the middle of it.",{"title":162,"searchDepth":163,"depth":163,"links":164},"",2,[165,166,167,168],{"id":26,"depth":163,"text":27},{"id":54,"depth":163,"text":55},{"id":128,"depth":163,"text":129},{"id":147,"depth":163,"text":148},"The singer who made a whole album by himself on a keyboard in 1989, gave the cassette era one of its lasting hits in Liyathambara, and found a second audience twenty years later.","1980s-2020s","md","\u002Fimages\u002Fpeople\u002Fathma-liyanage.webp","Athma Liyanage official YouTube channel","Unverified — fallback source","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.youtube.com\u002F@athmaliyanagemusic",{},true,false,"\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fathma-liyanage",[181,182,183],"Singer","Musician","Composer",{"title":5,"description":169},[186,189,192,195],{"title":187,"url":188},"Athma Liyanage — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FAthma_Liyanage",{"title":190,"url":191},"ආත්මා ලියනගේ — සිංහල විකිපීඩියා","https:\u002F\u002Fsi.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002F%E0%B6%86%E0%B6%AD%E0%B7%8A%E0%B6%B8%E0%B7%8F_%E0%B6%BD%E0%B7%92%E0%B6%BA%E0%B6%B1%E0%B6%9C%E0%B7%9A",{"title":193,"url":194},"Athma Liyanage — Apple Music artist page","https:\u002F\u002Fmusic.apple.com\u002Fus\u002Fartist\u002Fathma-liyanage\u002F779929219",{"title":196,"url":197},"Athma Liyanage song index — Siyalla","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.siyalla.com\u002Ffree-sinhala-mp3\u002Fartist-Athma-Liyanage\u002Fpage1\u002F","en\u002Fpeople\u002Fathma-liyanage","esAgCYCQJgdHHcbnlZ2Xn7wJQzsNWcg4pFPUOUvxnTA",1787999331182]