[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":210},["ShallowReactive",2],{"person-en-henry-caldera":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"artistId":6,"birthYear":7,"body":8,"born":180,"description":181,"died":182,"era":183,"extension":184,"heroImage":185,"imageCredit":186,"imageLicense":187,"imageSource":188,"meta":189,"navigation":190,"notable":191,"path":192,"roles":193,"seo":197,"sources":198,"stem":208,"translated":190,"url":201,"__hash__":209},"peopleEn\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fhenry-caldera.md","Henry Caldera",62,1937,{"type":9,"value":10,"toc":172},"minimark",[11,15,20,23,26,30,51,54,138,151,155,162,165,169],[12,13,14],"p",{},"At the Seeduwa school for deaf and blind children in the 1950s, a visiting teacher held music classes for the blind students. The teacher was Sunil Santha — by then a famous name and a famously difficult one, a composer who had walked out of Radio Ceylon rather than submit to its voice-grading panel. One of the boys in that class was Henry Caldera, who had lost his sight completely at fourteen. When school ended, Caldera kept going to Sunil Santha's house at Dehiyagatha in Ja-Ela to carry on learning. Out of that apprenticeship came a singer who wrote his own material, sang most of it alone, and stayed stubbornly outside the industry that grew up around him.",[16,17,19],"h2",{"id":18},"what-is-known-and-what-is-not","What is known, and what is not",[12,21,22],{},"This is a short article on purpose. Caldera is a genuinely loved figure whose songs are still sung, and he is also one of the worst-documented singers of his generation. The English and Sinhala Wikipedia entries about him carry editorial warnings that most of their content is unreferenced, and the only contemporary press report that can still be reached is the Daily Mirror's brief death notice of 12 October 2006, preserved in a web archive. There is no substantial interview, no published profile, no discography beyond a list of song titles. Rather than pad that out with invention, what follows sticks to what can actually be shown.",[12,24,25],{},"He was born on 19 August 1937 in Maradana, in Colombo. He became completely blind at the age of fourteen and was educated at the Seeduwa Deaf and Blind School, where he studied under Sunil Santha. He married a woman who was also blind, and they had four children. He died on 11 October 2006 at Seeduwa, having been diagnosed with cancer two years earlier, and was buried at Bandarawatte cemetery.",[16,27,29],{"id":28},"radio-and-a-very-small-discography","Radio, and a very small discography",[12,31,32,33,37,38,42,43,46,47,50],{},"He became a radio artist in 1968. His first hit followed in 1972 — ",[34,35,36],"strong",{},"තාර පැටියා"," ",[39,40,41],"em",{},"Thara Patiya",", the song still most closely associated with him, whose full title in the Sinhala databases runs ",[39,44,45],{},"Thath Thath Thath Thara Patiya",", a run of syllables that is closer to a child's counting rhyme than a lyric. English-language sources spell it ",[39,48,49],{},"Thara Petia","; the Sinhala spelling is තාර පැටියා.",[12,52,53],{},"A four-song record came out in 1977. Over his whole career he is credited with three cassettes and two compact discs, which for a singer active across four decades is almost nothing, and says something about how the Sinhala recording industry treated artists who did not chase it.",[12,55,56,57,37,60,63,64,37,67,70,71,37,74,77,78,37,81,84,85,37,88,91,92,37,95,63,98,37,101,63,104,37,107,110,111,37,114,117,118,37,121,124,125,63,128,63,131,63,134,137],{},"The songs themselves survive better than the records did. Among them: ",[34,58,59],{},"පෙනුණු සුව දසුන්",[39,61,62],{},"Penunu Suwa Dasun",", ",[34,65,66],{},"මිදුලේ සුදු වැලි තලයේ",[39,68,69],{},"Midule Sudu Weli Thalaye"," (\"on the white sand of the yard\"), ",[34,72,73],{},"ඊයේ උදයේ",[39,75,76],{},"Eeye Udaye"," (\"yesterday morning\"), ",[34,79,80],{},"හඬන්නෙපා අම්මේ",[39,82,83],{},"Hadannepa Amme"," (\"do not weep, mother\"), ",[34,86,87],{},"ලංකා මගේ ලංකා",[39,89,90],{},"Lanka Mage Lanka"," (\"Lanka, my Lanka\"), ",[34,93,94],{},"සමනල සිරිපා",[39,96,97],{},"Samanala Siripa",[34,99,100],{},"මල් නටු වැනි",[39,102,103],{},"Mal Natu Weni",[34,105,106],{},"ඔබ පෑව හසරැල්ල",[39,108,109],{},"Oba Pewa Hasarella"," (\"the smile you offered me\"), ",[34,112,113],{},"පෙමින් බැඳෙන්නයි",[39,115,116],{},"Pemin Bandennai"," and ",[34,119,120],{},"කන විදින වෙලේ",[39,122,123],{},"Kana Widina Wele",". A handful — ",[39,126,127],{},"Kanda Udin",[39,129,130],{},"Malli",[39,132,133],{},"Mokada Nago",[39,135,136],{},"Sanahase Sihil Nille"," — are duets; the rest he sang by himself.",[12,139,140,141,63,144,63,147,150],{},"Two threads run through the list. One is devotional: ",[39,142,143],{},"Budu Piye",[39,145,146],{},"Deva Meniyane",[39,148,149],{},"Mawage Malagama",". The other is children's song — and here the sources say something that has the ring of truth without being provable: that he wrote and sang for his own children and grandchildren first, and that the wider audience came second.",[16,152,154],{"id":153},"honours-and-a-stated-principle","Honours, and a stated principle",[12,156,157,158,161],{},"In 1993 he received the ",[34,159,160],{},"Kala Bhushana",", the second-highest state honour for a performing artist in Sri Lanka. Earlier, in 1979, Ranasinghe Premadasa — then prime minister — is said to have given him a house to live in. University student bodies and non-governmental organisations honoured him for his service to folk music.",[12,163,164],{},"The one line of his that has actually been reported in print is a conviction rather than an anecdote. The Daily Mirror's notice recorded that he held to the belief that art is art and that nothing can buy an artist, and that he held to it until he died. It is the sort of sentence that obituaries produce by the yard, but in his case the thin recording history rather supports it.",[16,166,168],{"id":167},"why-the-record-is-so-thin","Why the record is so thin",[12,170,171],{},"Caldera's obscurity in the sources is not an accident of this particular man. Sri Lanka's Sinhala-language newspaper archives from the 1970s to the 1990s — Silumina, Lankadeepa, Sarasaviya — are largely unreachable from outside the country, and the Daily News archive is closed to automated access altogether. Almost certainly there are interviews with him in those pages. Until somebody sits in a Colombo reading room with a stack of them, an honest article about Henry Caldera is going to be roughly this long.",{"title":173,"searchDepth":174,"depth":174,"links":175},"",2,[176,177,178,179],{"id":18,"depth":174,"text":19},{"id":28,"depth":174,"text":29},{"id":153,"depth":174,"text":154},{"id":167,"depth":174,"text":168},"19 August 1937","Blind from fourteen, he learned music from Sunil Santha at the Seeduwa blind school and wrote his own songs — among them the nonsense-rhyme children's favourite Thara Patiya.","11 October 2006","1960s-2000s","md","\u002Fimages\u002Fpeople\u002Fhenry-caldera.webp","The Lankan Mate","Unverified — fallback source","https:\u002F\u002Fthelankanmate.wordpress.com\u002F2017\u002F10\u002F23\u002Fthe-man-who-played-for-the-soul-henry-caldera\u002F",{},true,false,"\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fhenry-caldera",[194,195,196],"Singer","Composer","Lyricist",{"title":5,"description":181},[199,202,205],{"title":200,"url":201},"Henry Caldera — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FHenry_Caldera",{"title":203,"url":204},"හෙන්රි කල්දේරා — සිංහල විකිපීඩියා","https:\u002F\u002Fsi.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002F%E0%B7%84%E0%B7%99%E0%B6%B1%E0%B7%8A%E0%B6%BB%E0%B7%92_%E0%B6%9A%E0%B6%BD%E0%B7%8A%E0%B6%AF%E0%B7%9A%E0%B6%BB%E0%B7%8F",{"title":206,"url":207},"Henry Caldera Passed Away — Daily Mirror, 12 October 2006 (archived)","https:\u002F\u002Farchive.today\u002F20150424052034\u002Fhttp:\u002F\u002Farchives.dailymirror.lk\u002F2006\u002F10\u002F12\u002Fnews\u002F4.asp","en\u002Fpeople\u002Fhenry-caldera","h2jlkfzeTIliMhR0d71MpPGNYangftz6LPIJG8I9y00",1787999331913]