[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":254},["ShallowReactive",2],{"person-en-indrani-perera":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"artistId":6,"birthYear":7,"body":8,"born":220,"description":221,"died":222,"era":223,"extension":224,"heroImage":225,"imageCredit":226,"imageLicense":227,"imageSource":228,"meta":229,"navigation":230,"notable":231,"path":232,"roles":233,"seo":235,"sources":236,"stem":252,"translated":230,"url":239,"__hash__":253},"peopleEn\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Findrani-perera.md","Indrani Perera",67,1953,{"type":9,"value":10,"toc":211},"minimark",[11,25,30,33,36,43,46,56,84,91,95,102,106,156,180,187,191,200],[12,13,14,15,19,20,24],"p",{},"The Moonstones had a song they could not finish. ",[16,17,18],"em",{},"Dilhani"," needed a woman's voice, and there was no woman in the band. A friend named Mary, who happened to be a cousin of the lead singer, said she knew someone: a schoolgirl from Borella who sang hymns in church and had a good ear. Annesley Malewana asked her to come to Gerald Wickremesooriya's house in Colombo, where the band rehearsed. She sang, they kept her, and by January 1970 a Colombo newspaper had given her a headline that stuck for the rest of her life — ",[21,22,23],"strong",{},"The Dilhani Girl",".",[26,27,29],"h2",{"id":28},"presbyterian-girls-and-a-plan-to-be-a-doctor","Presbyterian Girls', and a plan to be a doctor",[12,31,32],{},"Indrani Perera was born in Borella, the middle of three sisters; her father Abeypala Perera was a Buddhist and her mother Muriel a Christian. English Wikipedia gives her birth date as 15 February 1953, while its own maintenance categories flag the year as unconfirmed, so the figure is best treated as approximate.",[12,34,35],{},"She went to Presbyterian Girls' School in Regent Street, where the music teacher Mrs Potger spotted her voice and the principal, Mrs Valerie, pushed her forward; her first recording for a public broadcaster was made on the school's behalf at what was then Radio Ceylon. She also learned Kandyan dance — under Chitrasena and Vajira, according to the biography Sooriya Records published of her — and was known at school as a dancer before she was known as a singer. She moved on to Stafford Ladies' College to take the biology stream, because the plan at the time was medicine. She has said since, cheerfully, that as a small girl she used to sing very loudly at home so the neighbours would praise her.",[12,37,38,39,42],{},"Her first band was the ",[21,40,41],{},"Fire-Flies",", run by Dalreen Arnolda. Then came the Moonstones.",[26,44,18],{"id":45},"dilhani",[12,47,48,51,52,55],{},[21,49,50],{},"දිල්හානී දුවනී"," ",[16,53,54],{},"Dilhani Duwani"," had already been sung by Annesley Malewana; recast as a woman's song it became one of the defining records of Sinhala pop and, by Sooriya's account, broke the sales figures of its day. Accounts of exactly when she joined the band differ — English Wikipedia's article on the Moonstones says 1968, her own article and the Sooriya biography say 1969, and the first stage appearance on record is a dance at the Hotel Taprobane on 31 December 1969.",[12,57,58,59,62,63,66,67,51,70,73,74,51,77,80,81,83],{},"Her second Moonstones record was ",[16,60,61],{},"Sigiriya",", issued on the Decca label as a Sooriya production, and it did well too. What she brought to the band was not a trained classical voice — she had none of the Hindustani schooling that a Radio Ceylon grading panel would have asked for — but a clear, unfussy, close-miked tone that sat naturally on top of a guitar band. That was exactly the point. The whole argument of Sinhala pop in 1969 was that a song did not have to sound like a concert to be worth recording, and a girl straight out of a school choir singing over Wijewardena's chords made the case more convincingly than any manifesto. Later, in 1973, she recorded with the ",[21,64,65],{},"Golden Chimes"," — the band Clarence Wijewardena founded after the Moonstones broke up — cutting ",[21,68,69],{},"මතකය ඇසුරින්",[16,71,72],{},"Mathakaya Asurin"," (\"gathering it from memory\") and ",[21,75,76],{},"හා හා හෝරේ",[16,78,79],{},"Ha Ha Hore"," for the Lotus label. Sooriya's biography says Wijewardena wrote ",[16,82,72],{}," in memory of her mother.",[12,85,86,87,90],{},"Sooriya named her, Wijewardena and Malewana ",[21,88,89],{},"the original Sinhala pop trio",", and the three of them toured together, staging shows at the BMICH and abroad, into the late 1980s.",[26,92,94],{"id":93},"three-sisters","Three Sisters",[12,96,97,98,101],{},"In December 1969 she formed a vocal group with her elder sister Mallika, who had been singing playback since 1965, and her younger sister Iranganie. ",[21,99,100],{},"The Three Sisters"," joined the Sooriya roster and worked the concert circuit for a decade, until Mallika died in 1980. Iranganie and Indrani continued as a duo for a time before Iranganie stepped away from singing. In December 2000 the surviving family put the repertoire back on stage: Indrani and Iranganie performed the Three Sisters songs again, with Mallika's daughter Hiranya taking the third part.",[26,103,105],{"id":104},"playback-and-baila","Playback and baila",[12,107,108,109,112,113,51,116,119,120,123,124,127,128,123,131,51,134,137,138,141,142,145,146,141,149,51,152,155],{},"She sang for the cinema through the 1970s. Among the films are ",[16,110,111],{},"Sikuruliya",", for which she sang ",[21,114,115],{},"වසන්තයේ මල් කැකුළයි",[16,117,118],{},"Wasanthaye Mal Kekulai"," (\"the flower bud of spring\"), a Wijewardena composition; ",[16,121,122],{},"Podi Malli",", with ",[16,125,126],{},"Gini Siluwaki","; ",[16,129,130],{},"Dinum Kanuwa",[21,132,133],{},"ඉරට අකීකරු",[16,135,136],{},"Irata Akeekaru"," (\"disobedient to the sun\"); ",[16,139,140],{},"Lassana Kella",", singing ",[16,143,144],{},"Kodi Gaha Yata"," with Anjali Gunatilaka; and ",[16,147,148],{},"Sadahatama Oba Mage",[21,150,151],{},"පෙම් රස වෑහෙන මංගල ගීතේ",[16,153,154],{},"Pem Rasa Wahena Mangala Geethe"," with Victor Rathnayake.",[12,157,158,159,51,162,165,166,51,169,172,173,176,177,24],{},"Alongside the film work she cut baila duets on the Sooriya label with Desmond de Silva and Paul Fernando, and built up a solo list that includes ",[21,160,161],{},"තිළිණේ ලෙසින්",[16,163,164],{},"Thiline Lesin",", ",[21,167,168],{},"සුදු අසු පිට නැගලා",[16,170,171],{},"Sudu Asu Pita Negala"," (\"mounted on a white horse\"), ",[16,174,175],{},"Kumudu Mal"," and ",[16,178,179],{},"Kageda Gon Wassa",[12,181,182,183,186],{},"She married the record producer James Sri Nivasan in 1979, having met him through work at the Lotus label. She has continued to perform, appearing in the \"Stars of the '70s\" revival shows that Annesley Malewana has staged in Sri Lanka, Canada, Australia and Dubai since the late 1990s, and taking her place among the Moonstones alumni at his fiftieth-anniversary concert at the BMICH in August 2016. In 2014 she received the Soul Sounds Award for her contribution to music, followed by awards from the National Catholic Literary Association in 2015 and the Provincial Literary Association in 2016. In 2025 she was portrayed by Dinakshie Priyasad in ",[16,184,185],{},"Rhythm of the Guitar: Clarence",", Theja Iddamalgoda's film about her old bandmate.",[26,188,190],{"id":189},"not-the-other-indrani","Not the other Indrani",[12,192,193,194,196,197,199],{},"Two singers named Indrani are regularly mistaken for one another, and it is worth saying plainly which is which. This Indrani — ",[21,195,5],{}," — is the band-era and playback singer of ",[16,198,18],{},", born in the 1950s, a contemporary of Clarence Wijewardena and Annesley Malewana, and still performing.",[12,201,202,203,206,207,210],{},"The other is ",[21,204,205],{},"Indrani Wijebandara"," (1935–2019), a generation older, who sang for ",[16,208,209],{},"Rekava"," in 1956 and who, with her husband Sisira Senaratne, more or less invented the modern Sinhala children's song. The Sinhala press usually called her by her married name, ඉන්ද්‍රාණි සේනාරත්න. She has her own article here. Their catalogues sit next to each other in the online song databases under three or four spellings of the same first name, and nothing in those listings tells a reader that the two are different people. The simplest test is the era: if the song comes from a 1950s film or a children's radio programme it belongs to Wijebandara, and if it has an electric guitar on it, it belongs to Perera.",{"title":212,"searchDepth":213,"depth":213,"links":214},"",2,[215,216,217,218,219],{"id":28,"depth":213,"text":29},{"id":45,"depth":213,"text":18},{"id":93,"depth":213,"text":94},{"id":104,"depth":213,"text":105},{"id":189,"depth":213,"text":190},"15 February 1953","The schoolgirl the Moonstones went looking for when they needed a woman's voice for Dilhani — and who stayed to become the third member of what Sooriya Records called the original Sinhala pop trio.",null,"1960s-2020s","md","\u002Fimages\u002Fpeople\u002Findrani-perera.webp","Daily News (Sri Lanka)","Unverified — fallback source","http:\u002F\u002Farchives1.dailynews.lk\u002F2017\u002F08\u002F29\u002Fentertainment\u002F126519\u002Fone-three",{},true,false,"\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Findrani-perera",[234],"Singer",{"title":5,"description":221},[237,240,243,246,249],{"title":238,"url":239},"Indrani Perera — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FIndrani_Perera",{"title":241,"url":242},"ඉන්ද්‍රානි පෙරේරා — Sooriya Records artist biography (archived)","https:\u002F\u002Fweb.archive.org\u002Fweb\u002F20200927173743\u002Fhttps:\u002F\u002Fwww.sooriya.lk\u002Fartist\u002Findrani-perera-sinhala\u002F",{"title":244,"url":245},"70s stars are back to bring on those old favourites — Sunday Times, 6 August 2017","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.sundaytimes.lk\u002F170806\u002Fplus\u002F70s-stars-are-back-to-bring-on-those-old-favourites-252905.html",{"title":247,"url":248},"Three decades of Golden Chimes — Sunday Times, 30 April 2000","http:\u002F\u002Fwww.sundaytimes.lk\u002F000430\u002Ftv.html",{"title":250,"url":251},"The Moonstones — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FThe_Moonstones","en\u002Fpeople\u002Findrani-perera","PQv4wokoSF8qMHxNVOGVXUupDOtZlB2M8sX6wm8TcxE",1787999331961]