[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":143},["ShallowReactive",2],{"person-en-mignonne-fernando-jetliners":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"artistId":6,"birthYear":7,"body":8,"born":110,"description":111,"died":112,"era":113,"extension":114,"heroImage":115,"imageCredit":116,"imageLicense":117,"imageSource":118,"meta":119,"navigation":120,"notable":121,"path":122,"roles":123,"seo":127,"sources":128,"stem":141,"translated":120,"url":131,"__hash__":142},"peopleEn\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fmignonne-fernando-jetliners.md","Mignonne Fernando and the Jetliners",756,1961,{"type":9,"value":10,"toc":101},"minimark",[11,20,25,28,31,35,38,41,45,52,71,75,78,81,91,95,98],[12,13,14,15,19],"p",{},"The Coconut Grove was the nightclub at the Galle Face Hotel, and in the middle of the 1960s the band with star billing there was the Jetliners. Vernon Corea, the Radio Ceylon announcer, introduced them from the floor. A decade later Corea was in London presenting a programme called ",[16,17,18],"em",{},"London Sounds Eastern"," on BBC Radio London, and he was still playing their records. Between those two rooms lies most of the story: a Colombo dance band that turned into the country's most travelled musical export.",[21,22,24],"h2",{"id":23},"four-instrumentalists-and-a-shadows-sound","Four instrumentalists and a Shadows sound",[12,26,27],{},"The Jetliners formed in 1961 as an instrumental group, in the manner of the Shadows — Lucien Perera on lead guitar, Félix Fernando on bass, Anton Gunawijeya on rhythm and Harris Jurangpathy on drums. Their first male vocalist was Ishan Bahar, with Wilma Squirling singing on some engagements. Colombo at that point had a proper Western-music circuit already: the Harold Seneviratne Combo, Peter Prins, the Esquire Set, Sam the Man, working off Glenn Miller and Pepe Jaramillo. What the Jetliners brought was the newer thing — Elvis, Cliff Richard, the electric-guitar group.",[12,29,30],{},"Then in 1965 a singer joined, and the band stopped being one of several.",[21,32,34],{"id":33},"mignonne","Mignonne",[12,36,37],{},"She was born Mignonette Malathi May Rutnam in Colombo on 9 May 1943, and was educated at St Bridget's Convent. Accounts of her first break differ: English Wikipedia says she won a Radio Ceylon talent contest at the age of seven, while a 2005 profile says she \"exploded onto the Ceylonese music scene in 1963\" by winning a Radio Ceylon song contest as Mignonne Rutnam. The surname is spelled both Rutnam and Ratnam in Sri Lankan sources. What is not in dispute is the training behind the voice — formal Western classical music, speech and drama — or that she had meant to read law.",[12,39,40],{},"She joined the Jetliners in 1965 under the management of Tony Fernando, whom she later married and who is universally credited with building the band's career. Radio Ceylon did the rest: the station's reach carried the group not just around the island but across South Asia, and the broadcasters who put her on air — Livy Wijemanne, Vernon Corea, Jimmy Bharucha, Nihal Bhareti, Vijaya Corea — turned her into a household name.",[21,42,44],{"id":43},"emi-and-a-wedding-song","EMI, and a wedding song",[12,46,47,48,51],{},"In 1969 Mignonne Fernando became the first Sri Lankan artist signed by EMI Records UK, and by Keith Prowse Music in London. The first of her songs KPM copyrighted was ",[16,49,50],{},"Mangala Mohotha"," — \"the wedding hour\" — released in English as \"Wedding Song\", with words by the broadcaster and lyricist Karunaratne Abeysekera. It became, and remains, one of the most requested songs at Sri Lankan weddings anywhere in the world, which is a strange fate for a record made in London.",[12,53,54,55,59,60,63,64,67,68,70],{},"She then spent several years on the international song-contest circuit, which in the late 1960s and 1970s was a serious business with television budgets behind it. Her \"Love Don't Let Me Down\" took the Embassy Award at the World Popular Song Festival; another of her compositions, \"Someday My Love\", won the Matsushita Award and a Special Jury Award for composer and performer at the Festival of Song; \"Coconut Man\" reached the finals of the World Popular Song Festival in Tokyo. And a Sinhala composition, ",[56,57,58],"strong",{},"ඔබ නිසා"," ",[16,61,62],{},"Oba Nisa",", was selected for the finals of the fifth Olympiad of Song in Athens in 1972 and is reported — by English Wikipedia, citing a 1972 ",[16,65,66],{},"Billboard"," item — to have taken the gold medal. Sri Lankan accounts of these contests are inconsistent about years and placings and should be read with that in mind; ",[16,69,62],{},", recorded with Desmond de Silva, is in any case the piece connoisseurs of the era name first.",[21,72,74],{"id":73},"a-band-people-passed-through","A band people passed through",[12,76,77],{},"The Jetliners were also a school. Singers came through and went out again: Loretta Koch, Sohan Pieris, Conrad de Silva, Desmond de Silva, Alston Koch. Several of them turned up next in the bands that grew up in the Jetliners' wake — the Spitfires and Gabo and the Breakaways — so that by the beginning of the 1970s the Colombo scene had a shape, and the Jetliners were near the top of it, playing the Coconut Grove and the Mascarilla, the New Year's Eve hotel dances, and \"beat shows\" in school halls for teenagers.",[12,79,80],{},"The band is often described as the first Sri Lankan group to break into India. That particular claim is hard to pin down in print, but the touring record behind it is not in doubt. Mignonne Fernando and the Jetliners played long engagements at the Taj in Mumbai; she spent years as a resident musician at the Regent Hotel in Hong Kong; the itinerary ran from the United States to Singapore. She was billed in the region's press as \"Sri Lanka's Ambassadress of Song\", which for a Sri Lankan act of that generation was not merely flattery — there were very few others out there.",[12,82,83,84,87,88,90],{},"Her own recording career came late. Her first CD, ",[16,85,86],{},"A Celebration of Life",", appeared only in 2003, after the death of her husband and manager, and mixed the old material with new compositions — ",[16,89,50],{}," rearranged with a flute part by Sajeewa Gurusinghe, a song called \"Proud to be Sri Lankan\" written after she watched an IMAX film in which astronauts pointed out the island from orbit, a version of \"Somewhere Over the Rainbow\", and an overture she had written for the band's Australian tours in 2000. She headlined a large concert in Colombo in March 2006.",[21,92,94],{"id":93},"the-last-night-at-musaeus","The last night at Musaeus",[12,96,97],{},"On Sunday 3 March 2013, at the Musaeus College hall in Colombo, the original Jetliners played together for the last time. Mignonne Fernando, Anton Gunawijeya, Indra Raj, Félix Fernando, Harris Jurangpathy and Conrad de Silva were on stage, with a guest from Britain, David Roberts. Two nights earlier they had played a dinner dance at the Galadari, working through a set of more than sixty songs chosen so that the audience could dance to the things they had danced to in the sixties. Most of the concert tickets had gone before the notice appeared in the paper.",[12,99,100],{},"Fifty-two years after four young men set up to sound like the Shadows in Colombo, that was the end of it. What the band left behind is less a catalogue than a proof: that a Sri Lankan group with a Sri Lankan singer could hold a residency in Bombay, sign to a London label and come home to play a wedding song that everybody's aunt would request for the next fifty years.",{"title":102,"searchDepth":103,"depth":103,"links":104},"",2,[105,106,107,108,109],{"id":23,"depth":103,"text":24},{"id":33,"depth":103,"text":34},{"id":43,"depth":103,"text":44},{"id":73,"depth":103,"text":74},{"id":93,"depth":103,"text":94},"1961","The Colombo band that started out imitating the Shadows in 1961 and became the country's most travelled musical export, and the singer EMI signed in London in 1969.","2013","1960s-2010s","md","\u002Fimages\u002Fpeople\u002Fmignonne-fernando-jetliners.webp","F's Place (kermeey.blogspot.com)","Unverified — fallback source","http:\u002F\u002Fkermeey.blogspot.com\u002F2008\u002F03\u002Fjetliners.html",{},true,false,"\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fmignonne-fernando-jetliners",[124,125,126],"Band","Singer","Composer",{"title":5,"description":111},[129,132,135,138],{"title":130,"url":131},"Mignonne Fernando — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FMignonne_Fernando",{"title":133,"url":134},"Origins of the Colombo Music Scene – Reflections over 50 Years, by Ajit Jayetileke — Daily Mirror \u002F Times Online, 25 October 2021","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.sundaytimes.lk\u002Fonline\u002Fopinion\u002FOrigins-of-the-Colombo-Music-Scene-Reflections-over-50-Years\u002F158-1135684",{"title":136,"url":137},"Take a trip to the 60s with the Jetliners — Sunday Times, 24 February 2013","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.sundaytimes.lk\u002F130224\u002Fplus\u002Ftake-a-trip-to-the-60s-with-the-jetliners-34106.html",{"title":139,"url":140},"Mignonne Fernando to headline concert in Colombo in 2006 — World Music Central, 3 September 2005 (archived)","https:\u002F\u002Fweb.archive.org\u002Fweb\u002F20080517233041\u002Fhttp:\u002F\u002Fwww.worldmusiccentral.org\u002Farticle.php\u002F20050902030958975","en\u002Fpeople\u002Fmignonne-fernando-jetliners","HjQUxe2iJ0re8NUbaJ_7Fu_hnBjoaG32wp-pPJqNjd4",1787999332703]