[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":191},["ShallowReactive",2],{"person-en-mohammed-gauss":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"artistId":6,"birthYear":7,"body":8,"born":7,"description":156,"died":7,"era":157,"extension":158,"heroImage":7,"imageCredit":7,"imageLicense":7,"imageSource":7,"meta":159,"navigation":160,"notable":161,"path":162,"roles":163,"seo":166,"sources":167,"stem":189,"translated":160,"url":170,"__hash__":190},"peopleEn\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fmohammed-gauss.md","Mohammed Gauss",2731,null,{"type":9,"value":10,"toc":147},"minimark",[11,15,23,28,43,50,61,67,72,108,119,123,130,133,137,144],[12,13,14],"p",{},"Some time in the mid-1940s, in a house in Kotahena, a schoolteacher named D. T. Fernando sat up past midnight listening to a man play melodies over and over on a keyboard instrument, and wrote Sinhala words to fit them. Fernando had never written a film lyric before. The man at the keyboard had been asked to supply the music for only the second feature film ever made in the Sinhala language, and he had decided to do something nobody in Ceylon had tried: instead of lifting tunes from Indian records, he would write his own.",[12,16,17,18,22],{},"The film was ",[19,20,21],"em",{},"Asokamala",". The musician was Mohammed Gauss.",[24,25,27],"h2",{"id":26},"the-man-who-is-barely-on-paper","The man who is barely on paper",[12,29,30,31,34,35,38,39,42],{},"Almost everything a biography normally begins with is missing here. Gauss was born in India — no town, no year is recorded in any source found. He died in Sri Lanka, and no date has been published for that either. English Wikipedia lists him under \"year of birth missing\"; even his name is unsettled, appearing as ",[32,33,5],"strong",{},", as ",[32,36,37],{},"Mohamed Ghouse",", and on posters and in the memories of musicians simply as ",[32,40,41],{},"Gauss Master",". Sinhala sources write it මොහොමඩ් ගවුස්.",[12,44,45,46,49],{},"What is documented is where he turns up. He is said to have come to Ceylon to write music for ",[19,47,48],{},"nurthi"," drama at the invitation of the playwright John de Silva — which, if it is right, would put him in the country before de Silva's death in 1922, decades before the film work he is remembered for. He worked for the Columbia record company during the gramophone years. He is named in D. P. Gankanda's survey of Muslim contributions to Sinhala music alongside Mohideen Baig, A. R. M. Ibrahim, T. F. Latheef and Nona Subaida — the community of Muslim and Malay musicians who, from the 1930s onwards, supplied a great deal of the singing and playing on Sinhala Buddhist devotional records.",[12,51,52,53,56,57,60],{},"His own surviving credit from that era fits the pattern of the time. The devotional ",[32,54,55],{},"මහ බෝධි මුලේ"," ",[19,58,59],{},"Maha Bodhi Mule"," — \"at the foot of the great Bodhi tree\" — carries his name as composer, and the Sinhala Wikipedia account of the gramophone era lists a song of that title among the records built on Hindi and Tamil tunes. Gauss began as a man who fitted Sinhala words and Sinhala subjects to melodies from elsewhere. That is exactly what makes what he did next unusual.",[24,62,64,66],{"id":63},"asokamala-1947",[19,65,21],{},", 1947",[12,68,69,71],{},[19,70,21],{}," opened on 9 April 1947 at the Regal Cinema in Colombo, with the Prime Minister D. S. Senanayake and Mrs Senanayake as guests of honour. It was the second Sinhala-language feature and the first directed by a Sinhalese, and like almost every Sinhala film of that decade it was shot in South India — at Central Studios, Coimbatore.",[12,73,74,75,56,78,81,82,56,85,81,88,56,91,94,95,56,98,81,101,56,104,107],{},"Both English Wikipedia and the films.lk cinema database record the same point about it: the melodies were original compositions by Gauss, \"a departure from what was to be the copying of Indian melodies in the time to come.\" The songs included ",[32,76,77],{},"භවේ භීත හැර",[19,79,80],{},"Bhawe Bheetha Hara",", ",[32,83,84],{},"ප්‍රීති ප්‍රීති",[19,86,87],{},"Prithi Prithi",[32,89,90],{},"ශාන්ත මේ රාත්‍රියේ",[19,92,93],{},"Shantha Me Rathriye"," — the first lyric D. T. Fernando ever wrote, a description of the calm of night — ",[32,96,97],{},"ආලේ මගේ",[19,99,100],{},"Aale Mage",[32,102,103],{},"හෝ ප්‍රේමේ බැබැලේ",[19,105,106],{},"Ho Preme Bebale",", and \"Nayana Wani Sudo\".",[12,109,110,111,114,115,118],{},"Three careers started in that recording room. Mohideen Baig, later the most sought-after playback voice in the country, made his film debut in it. So did a young violinist from Moratuwa credited on the sleeve as W. D. Albert Perera, who would become ",[32,112,113],{},"Amaradeva",". He was in Gauss's band as an instrumentalist; by one account, published in ",[19,116,117],{},"Sarasaviya",", Gauss turned him into a singer during the sessions and made him assistant music director — the first time that role appears in Sinhala film. Amaradeva's generation would later build a whole aesthetic movement out of rejecting South Indian film scoring, which gives the story a certain irony: the man they rebelled against had taught several of them the job.",[24,120,122],{"id":121},"eda-rae-and-a-fifteen-year-old-with-the-wrong-name","Eda Rae, and a fifteen-year-old with the wrong name",[12,124,125,126,129],{},"Gauss's second well-documented discovery was Latha Walpola. She had been singing on radio since childhood under the name Latha Fernando, and her father was firmly against her going into films. She met the director Shanthi Kumar and made her playback debut in his ",[19,127,128],{},"Eda Rae"," without telling him, singing three duets with Herbert M. Seneviratne to lyrics by D. T. Fernando and music by Gauss. Sources disagree about the year — Latha Walpola's own Wikipedia entry says 1953, D. T. Fernando's says 1952. The film was a hit, and she went on to dominate Sinhala playback singing for three decades.",[12,131,132],{},"Two other songs are attributed to Gauss by the Sinhala press: \"Thirasara Aale Amaraniya We\" for Amaradeva and \"Nayana Wani Sudo\" for Baig. Both titles appear in D. T. Fernando's list of lyrics, which supports the attribution.",[24,134,136],{"id":135},"the-claim-and-how-to-hold-it","The claim, and how to hold it",[12,138,139,140,143],{},"Music critics have credited Gauss with developing a Sri Lankan style of film composition distinct from the Indian model — the claim appears in ",[19,141,142],{},"The Rough Guide to World Music"," and is repeated in tourist-board and encyclopedia summaries. It is a real critical judgement and worth recording, but it is a judgement, not a documented fact, and the evidence behind it is thin: one film, 1947, in which the tunes were his own rather than borrowed.",[12,145,146],{},"What can be said without hedging is smaller and still remarkable. In a decade when the standard practice was to copy an Indian record and write Sinhala words over it, a composer from India chose not to. And three of the largest voices in twentieth-century Sinhala music — Amaradeva, Mohideen Baig, Latha Walpola — walked into their first film session to find him waiting at the keyboard.",{"title":148,"searchDepth":149,"depth":149,"links":150},"",2,[151,152,154,155],{"id":26,"depth":149,"text":27},{"id":63,"depth":149,"text":153},"Asokamala, 1947",{"id":121,"depth":149,"text":122},{"id":135,"depth":149,"text":136},"The India-born composer who scored Asokamala in 1947 with melodies of his own instead of borrowed Indian ones, and who gave Amaradeva, Mohideen Baig and Latha Walpola their first film work.","1940s-1960s","md",{},true,false,"\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fmohammed-gauss",[164,165],"Composer","Music Director",{"title":5,"description":156},[168,171,174,177,180,183,186],{"title":169,"url":170},"Mohammed Gauss — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FMohammed_Gauss",{"title":172,"url":173},"Asokamala — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FAsokamala",{"title":175,"url":176},"Asokamala (1947) — films.lk, Digital Identity of Sinhala Cinema","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.films.lk\u002Fasokamala-sinhala-film-2.html",{"title":178,"url":179},"D. T. Fernando — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FD._T._Fernando",{"title":181,"url":182},"Latha Walpola — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FLatha_Walpola",{"title":184,"url":185},"D. P. Gankanda, 'Contribution of Muslims to Sinhala music' — Sailan Muslim","https:\u002F\u002Fsailanmuslim.com\u002Fculture-heritage\u002Fcontribution-of-muslims-to-sinhala-music-by-d-p-gankanda-polgasowita\u002F",{"title":187,"url":188},"ග්‍රැමෆෝන් තැටි යුගය (සංගීතය) — සිංහල විකිපීඩියා","https:\u002F\u002Fsi.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002F%E0%B6%9C%E0%B7%8A%E2%80%8D%E0%B6%BB%E0%B7%90%E0%B6%B8%E0%B7%86%E0%B7%9D%E0%B6%B1%E0%B7%8A_%E0%B6%AD%E0%B7%90%E0%B6%A7%E0%B7%92_%E0%B6%BA%E0%B7%94%E0%B6%9C%E0%B6%BA_(%E0%B7%83%E0%B6%82%E0%B6%9C%E0%B7%93%E0%B6%AD%E0%B6%BA)","en\u002Fpeople\u002Fmohammed-gauss","NnJWbLs6IhnWcG1zIa36WByDozLati9lkcldKqPYwp8",1787999332735]