[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":287},["ShallowReactive",2],{"person-en-narada-disasekara":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"artistId":6,"birthYear":7,"body":8,"born":251,"description":252,"died":253,"era":254,"extension":255,"heroImage":256,"imageCredit":257,"imageLicense":258,"imageSource":259,"meta":260,"navigation":261,"notable":262,"path":263,"roles":264,"seo":268,"sources":269,"stem":285,"translated":261,"url":272,"__hash__":286},"peopleEn\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fnarada-disasekara.md","Narada Disasekara",86,1933,{"type":9,"value":10,"toc":242},"minimark",[11,25,28,33,36,39,61,65,74,95,105,109,166,207,211,218,221,225,239],[12,13,14,15,19,20,24],"p",{},"Somewhere in Ceylon in the late 1950s a man listened to a love song on the radio, picked up a chopping knife, and split the radio in two. The Observer reported it under the headline \"Song Sends Man Insane\". The song was ",[16,17,18],"strong",{},"මුළු හදින් මම ඇයට පෙම් කොට"," ",[21,22,23],"em",{},"Mulu Hadin Mama Ayata Pem Kota"," (\"I loved her with my whole heart\"), and the voice on the record belonged to a young Radio Ceylon staffer who had joined the station not as a singer but as a mechanic in the engineering section.",[12,26,27],{},"That is the kind of detail that survives about Narada Disasekara — vivid, told secondhand, hard to check. The one thing about him that is not in dispute is bigger: when Sri Lanka's film industry finally got around to giving itself awards, the first prize handed out for playback singing went to him.",[29,30,32],"h2",{"id":31},"a-cricketer-who-wanted-to-be-an-actor","A cricketer who wanted to be an actor",[12,34,35],{},"Narada Leelanaga Caldera Disasekara was born on 7 June 1933. English Wikipedia and the Sinhala Wikipedia infobox both give the 7th; the body of the Sinhala article says the 17th, one of the small unresolved contradictions that follow him around. He was born in Borella, in Colombo, took his early schooling at St Thomas' College, Kotte, and finished at Kalutara Vidyalaya.",[12,37,38],{},"At school he was known for cricket rather than music: captain of the school eleven and its fastest bowler. He studied music as a subject and became the first student at Kalutara Vidyalaya to pass it at Ordinary Level, and he learned the violin under a schoolmaster named Seemon Lokuliyana — but what he actually wanted to be, by his own later account, was an actor.",[12,40,41,42,45,46,49,50,19,53,56,57,60],{},"In 1954 he joined Radio Ceylon on the technical side. The following year he passed the station's grading test for ",[21,43,44],{},"sarala gee",", the light-song category, and crossed the corridor from the equipment to the microphone. His entry song was ",[21,47,48],{},"Thilo Thilaka Sugatha Piya","; the first record of his to become genuinely popular was ",[16,51,52],{},"චන්දන ඇඟ ගාලා",[21,54,55],{},"Chandana Enga Gala",", a duet with Mallika Kahawita. Then came ",[21,58,59],{},"Mulu Hadin Mama",", and the chopping knife.",[29,62,64],{"id":63},"ranmuthu-duwa","Ranmuthu Duwa",[12,66,67,68,19,71,73],{},"He came to film playback at a moment when Sinhala cinema music was still largely a matter of fitting Sinhala words to borrowed Hindi and Tamil melodies. The film that changed his life was ",[16,69,70],{},"රන්මුතු දූව",[21,72,64],{}," (\"island of golden pearls\"), released in 1962 — Sri Lanka's first colour feature, a treasure-hunting adventure that a very large share of the island turned out to see.",[12,75,76,77,19,80,83,84,87,88,19,91,94],{},"Its songs were the work of three men at the top of their powers: lyrics by Sri Chandraratne Manawasinghe, music by W. D. Amaradeva. Disasekara sang three of them. ",[16,78,79],{},"පාරමිතා බල",[21,81,82],{},"Paramitha Bala"," he sang alongside Amaradeva himself and a young Nanda Malini; ",[21,85,86],{},"Pipi Pipi Renu Natana"," he sang alone; and ",[16,89,90],{},"ගලන ගඟකි ජීවිතේ",[21,92,93],{},"Galana Gangaki Jeewithe"," — \"life is a flowing river\" — he sang as a duet with Nanda Malini.",[12,96,97,98,101,102,104],{},"That last one did it. On 9 May 1964, seventeen years after the first Sinhala feature film, the ",[21,99,100],{},"Sarasaviya"," newspaper staged the country's first film awards ceremony, judging a backlog of everything released since 1960. Narada Disasekara was named Best Playback Singer, and because his was the first such award the industry had ever given, he became — permanently, and by an accident of scheduling — the first playback singer in Sri Lankan cinema to be honoured for it. ",[21,103,64],{}," did extremely well that night; three of the four music prizes went to that single film, which tells you something about how thin the field looked to the judges and how completely one picture had captured the moment.",[29,106,108],{"id":107},"the-film-years","The film years",[12,110,111,112,115,116,119,120,19,123,126,127,130,131,126,134,137,138,19,141,144,145,148,149,19,152,126,155,158,159,126,162,165],{},"The awards ceremony did not make him a film star, but it kept him in demand for the rest of the decade. The Sinhala Wikipedia article lists his film songs year by year: ",[21,113,114],{},"Gamana Nonimei Jeewithe"," (\"the journey does not end\") for ",[21,117,118],{},"Sikuru Tharuwa"," in 1963, with words again by Manawasinghe and music by R. Muttusamy; ",[16,121,122],{},"ආරිච්චි බෝරිච්චි",[21,124,125],{},"Arichchi Borichchi"," for ",[21,128,129],{},"Getawarayo"," in 1964, a Mahagama Sekera lyric set by Amaradeva; ",[21,132,133],{},"Savibala Yakada Wage",[21,135,136],{},"Sudo Sudu"," in 1965; ",[16,139,140],{},"මලින් මලේ රේණු උරා",[21,142,143],{},"Malin Male Renu Ura"," (\"drinking pollen from flower to flower\") for ",[21,146,147],{},"Adarayai Karunawai"," the same year; and in 1966 two duets with Sujatha Attanayake — ",[16,150,151],{},"පුෂ්ප මකරන්දය මාගේ",[21,153,154],{},"Pushpa Makarandaya Mage",[21,156,157],{},"Sihina Hathak"," and ",[21,160,161],{},"Susudu Piyume",[21,163,164],{},"Sanda Nega Eddi",".",[12,167,168,169,171,172,175,176,179,180,183,184,19,187,183,190,183,193,158,196,199,200,202,203,206],{},"He also acted in ",[21,170,164],{}," and wrote its background music, and he is said to have appeared as a miner in a foreign production titled ",[21,173,174],{},"Green Emerald",", singing a Sinhala song in it. In 1967 he stepped up to music direction proper with L. M. Perera's ",[21,177,178],{},"Hathara Kendare",". Among the songs he kept singing on radio and stage were ",[21,181,182],{},"Ran Ridee Wasthuwa",", ",[16,185,186],{},"චන්ද්‍ර බිම්බයුරු",[21,188,189],{},"Chandra Bimbayuru",[21,191,192],{},"Me Prema Loke",[21,194,195],{},"Ethana Gau Ganan Duren",[21,197,198],{},"Katu Akule Pipi",". Two of his most-loved records came out of Sinhala novels: ",[21,201,23],{},", written by Gunadasa Liyanage, and ",[21,204,205],{},"Anagatha Pem Sihina Mewwemi",", written by Dharmapriya Lokuhewa.",[29,208,210],{"id":209},"leaving-the-station","Leaving the station",[12,212,213,214,217],{},"In 1967 Radio Ceylon was reconstituted as the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation. Something in that reorganisation went badly against Disasekara — Sinhala sources describe it simply as an injustice done to him — and he left broadcasting altogether, joining the newspaper ",[21,215,216],{},"Dawasa",". He later worked as media coordinating secretary in the Ministry of Urban Development and Sacred Area Development. For a singer whose whole career had been built inside one building, it was an abrupt exit, and his recorded output thins out sharply after it.",[12,219,220],{},"He was married first, in 1979, to the broadcaster and actress Tileka Ranasinghe; their son Saranga Disasekara became one of the best-known screen actors of his own generation. After that marriage ended he married Nilangani Disasekara. He received honorary awards from the universities of Colombo and Moratuwa and a state arts decoration in 1999. He died on 19 May 2010, aged seventy-six, and was buried at Borella.",[29,222,224],{"id":223},"the-mat-parties-at-kalutara","The mat parties at Kalutara",[12,226,227,228,231,232,234,235,238],{},"Two years after his death his widow put together a book of his life, ",[21,229,230],{},"Mudu Hadawathaka Thathu",", launched at a memorial evening at the Folk Art Centre in Battaramulla on 28 August 2012 — timed for the fiftieth anniversary year of ",[21,233,64],{},". In the Sarasaviya feature that accompanied it, Nilangani Disasekara described how she first met him. She was eleven, living at her uncle's house in Kalutara and going to school at Kalutara Balika. Narada was already on the radio, and he and Amaradeva came to the house every weekend for a ",[21,236,237],{},"paduru party"," — the mat parties where people sat on the floor and sang for hours with no audience but each other.",[12,240,241],{},"They became sweethearts and were separated in their twenties; they met again in middle age, when he was alone and, in her telling, had been through a great deal. \"Narada was a very sensitive man who faced a great many troubles,\" she said. \"That sensitivity was in many of the songs he sang.\" It is not a bad summary of the whole career: a man remembered less for the volume of what he recorded than for a handful of songs that got under people's skin — one of them badly enough to cost a radio set its life.",{"title":243,"searchDepth":244,"depth":244,"links":245},"",2,[246,247,248,249,250],{"id":31,"depth":244,"text":32},{"id":63,"depth":244,"text":64},{"id":107,"depth":244,"text":108},{"id":209,"depth":244,"text":210},{"id":223,"depth":244,"text":224},"7 June 1933","The Radio Ceylon sound engineer who became a singer, sang three songs in Sri Lanka's first colour film, and walked away with the very first Sarasaviya Award ever given for playback singing.","19 May 2010","1950s-2000s","md","\u002Fimages\u002Fpeople\u002Fnarada-disasekara.webp","Silumina (Lake House)","Unverified — fallback source","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.silumina.lk\u002F2022\u002F05\u002F14\u002F%E0%B6%BB%E0%B7%83%E0%B6%B3%E0%B7%94%E0%B6%B1\u002F%E0%B6%9C%E0%B7%93-%E0%B6%BD%E0%B7%9C%E0%B7%80%E0%B7%9A-%E0%B6%BB%E0%B7%83-%E0%B6%B7%E0%B7%8F%E0%B7%80-%E0%B6%9A%E0%B7%90%E0%B6%BD%E0%B6%AD%E0%B7%96-%E0%B7%83%E0%B7%9E%E0%B6%B1%E0%B7%8A%E0%B6%AF%E0%B6%BB%E0%B7%8A%E0%B6%BA%E0%B7%80%E0%B7%9A%E0%B6%AF%E0%B7%92%E0%B6%BA%E0%B7%8F-%E0%B6%B1%E0%B7%8F%E0%B6%BB%E0%B6%AF-%E0%B6%AF%E0%B7%92%E0%B7%83%E0%B7%8F%E0%B7%83%E0%B7%9A%E0%B6%9A%E0%B6%BB",{},true,false,"\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fnarada-disasekara",[265,266,267],"Singer","Musician","Music Director",{"title":5,"description":252},[270,273,276,279,282],{"title":271,"url":272},"Narada Disasekara — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FNarada_Disasekara",{"title":274,"url":275},"නාරද දිසාසේකර — සිංහල විකිපීඩියා","https:\u002F\u002Fsi.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002F%E0%B6%B1%E0%B7%8F%E0%B6%BB%E0%B6%AF_%E0%B6%AF%E0%B7%92%E0%B7%83%E0%B7%8F%E0%B7%83%E0%B7%9A%E0%B6%9A%E0%B6%BB",{"title":277,"url":278},"මුළු හදින් ඇය ඔහුට පෙම් කොට — Sarasaviya, 23 August 2012","https:\u002F\u002Farchives.sarasaviya.lk\u002F2012\u002F08\u002F23\u002F?fn=sa1208238",{"title":280,"url":281},"Sri Lankan vocalist Narada Disasekara passes away — ColomboPage, 19 May 2010 (Internet Archive)","https:\u002F\u002Fweb.archive.org\u002Fweb\u002F20100521173405\u002Fhttp:\u002F\u002Fwww.colombopage.com\u002Farchive_10A\u002FMay19_1274280390JR.php",{"title":283,"url":284},"Sarasaviya Awards — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FSarasaviya_Awards","en\u002Fpeople\u002Fnarada-disasekara","jiXaWOHvR0o5Q0i1mFrF8CTlvxtpN2ABd-bRDLhmCkY",1787999332831]