[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":276},["ShallowReactive",2],{"person-en-neela-wickramasinghe":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"artistId":6,"birthYear":7,"body":8,"born":232,"description":233,"died":234,"era":235,"extension":236,"heroImage":237,"imageCredit":238,"imageLicense":239,"imageSource":240,"meta":241,"navigation":242,"notable":242,"path":243,"roles":244,"seo":248,"sources":249,"stem":274,"translated":242,"url":252,"__hash__":275},"peopleEn\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fneela-wickramasinghe.md","Neela Wickramasinghe",71,1950,{"type":9,"value":10,"toc":224},"minimark",[11,29,32,37,40,47,61,64,68,86,113,172,175,179,197,208,211,215,218],[12,13,14,15,19,20,24,25,28],"p",{},"Ask a room of Sri Lankans who sings ",[16,17,18],"strong",{},"මාස්ටර් සර්"," ",[21,22,23],"em",{},"Master Sir"," and a good number will answer with the name of the country's greatest male vocalist. They are wrong, and the mistake is instructive. The song — Nimal Mendis's melody, Karunaratne Abeysekera's Sinhala words, a plantation labourer's address to the man who owns his working life, turning on a raise of eight ",[21,26,27],{},"panam"," — was carried into thirty years of radio life by a woman who caught polio at six months old, taught music in girls' schools for twenty-three years, and released only about eight cassettes in her entire career.",[12,30,31],{},"Neela Wickramasinghe put almost nothing out and left an enormous mark. When she died she was not on a stage at all. She was Sri Lanka's Consul General in Milan.",[33,34,36],"h2",{"id":35},"wattala-to-the-grading-panel","Wattala to the grading panel",[12,38,39],{},"Dona Delicia Neela Wickramasinghe was born on 30 March 1950 in Wattala, the younger of two daughters. Her father was a businessman with a reputation as a singer and actor; her mother sang folk songs at home. Polio at six months left its mark on her for life — a fact worth knowing, because it explains why she gave herself so completely to a UNICEF polio-eradication campaign in 1989, singing the campaign song that ran constantly on radio and television through the years in which Sri Lanka drove the disease out.",[12,41,42,43,46],{},"She went to school at Kesbewa, then Mampe Sri Sobhita Maha Vidyalaya and Piliyandala Central College, and she was on the radio absurdly early: a children's slot called ",[21,44,45],{},"Amateur Voice"," on Radio Ceylon in 1959, when she was nine. She won the All Island Singing Competition in 1963 and again in 1965, and on one occasion came first out of 555 entrants at a competition held at the Sarasaviya studio.",[12,48,49,50,19,53,56,57,60],{},"Her formal ascent went by the book of the period. In 1967 she made her first Radio Ceylon recording — ",[16,51,52],{},"සඳේ අඹරේ නිශා මල් යට",[21,54,55],{},"Sande Ambare Nisha Mal Yata",", words by Dalton Alwis, music by Lionel Algama — and in 1968 the grading panel passed her as a B-grade artist. In 1973 the songs she recorded for the SLBC's research unit lifted her to A grade, and in 1974 she completed the Sangeeth Visharada degree in North Indian classical music. She had trained in the classical system ",[21,58,59],{},"before"," her career took off, rather than catching up afterwards as many of her contemporaries did, and critics heard the difference: a voice that stayed unmistakably Sri Lankan even when the arrangement underneath it was thoroughly Western.",[12,62,63],{},"She studied under Vincent Somapala and Ananda Jayasinghe, and named Amara Athukorala, Sarath Dassanayake and Premadasa Mudunkotuwa among her teachers as well.",[33,65,67],{"id":66},"master-sir-and-the-westernised-songs","Master Sir, and the westernised songs",[12,69,70,71,74,75,78,79,19,82,85],{},"Her film work began in 1972 with backing vocals for Sarathchandra Herath's ",[21,72,73],{},"Sithijaya"," under Sarath Dassanayake's music direction. Her first solo film song came in 1979 with ",[21,76,77],{},"Gehenu Lamai",": ",[16,80,81],{},"වියෝ ගී ගැයෙනා හදේ",[21,83,84],{},"Viyo Gee Gayena Hade"," (\"a song of parting sounds in the heart\"), a Sunil Ariyaratne lyric set by Nimal Mendis. It has never left the airwaves.",[12,87,88,89,91,92,95,96,19,99,102,103,105,106,108,109,112],{},"Mendis wrote two more of the songs a 2010 profile credits her with immortalising. ",[21,90,23],{}," — often listed by its opening words, ",[21,93,94],{},"Panam Aten"," — and ",[16,97,98],{},"රන් ටිකිරි සිනා",[21,100,101],{},"Ran Tikiri Sina"," (\"golden little smile\") were both written in English first and then translated, and both are heavily westernised in construction: guitar figures, unusual time, no Hindustani ornament at all. ",[21,104,101],{}," was first recorded in 1979 by other voices; hers is a later cover, made with T. M. Jayaratne. ",[21,107,23],{}," was written for the 1974 film ",[21,110,111],{},"Kalu Diya Dahara","; Neville Fernando sang the Sinhala vocal heard inside the film, and Wickramasinghe sang it over the title sequence. In a 2014 Sarasaviya interview she dated her own first performance of it to 1973, which fits a recording made ahead of the film's release. What is not in doubt is that hers is the version that stayed on the radio, and that neither W. D. Amaradeva nor anyone else of that generation had anything to do with it. In 2012, marking forty-five years in music, she built an entire solo concert around it, staged at the Nelum Pokuna theatre in Colombo.",[12,114,115,116,19,119,122,123,19,126,122,129,122,132,19,135,122,138,19,141,144,145,19,148,151,152,19,155,122,158,19,161,164,165,19,168,171],{},"The rest of the catalogue ranges much wider. ",[16,117,118],{},"දෑතට වළලු",[21,120,121],{},"Dethata Walalu",", ",[16,124,125],{},"සදා උකුලු තල",[21,127,128],{},"Sada Ukulu Thala",[21,130,131],{},"Dawasak Da Wasantha",[16,133,134],{},"තුන් සිත දැහැන්",[21,136,137],{},"Thun Sitha Dehen",[16,139,140],{},"මේ අවන්හලේ",[21,142,143],{},"Me Awanhale"," (another Mendis–Abeysekera piece), ",[16,146,147],{},"සුදු මුතු රළ පෙළ",[21,149,150],{},"Sudu Muthu Rala Pela"," (\"a line of white pearl waves\"), ",[16,153,154],{},"පාරමී දම් පුරමු අප දෙදෙනා",[21,156,157],{},"Parami Dam Puramu Apa Dedena",[16,159,160],{},"නිල් අහස් තලේ",[21,162,163],{},"Nil Ahas Thale"," and ",[16,166,167],{},"පුංචි සිතේ පුංචි සිනා",[21,169,170],{},"Punchi Sithe Punchi Sina",". She sang duets with T. M. Jayaratne, and worked with lyricists and composers across the whole spectrum: Ajantha Ranasinghe, Sunil Ariyaratne, Dharmasiri Gamage, Kularatne Ariyawansa, Premasiri Khemadasa, Rohana Weerasinghe, Amaradeva, Stanley Peiris and C. de S. Kulatilake.",[12,173,174],{},"Accounts differ on how much of it there was. Wikipedia and the music databases say sixty-seven films; a 2010 Sunday Observer profile says about seventy. Take it as roughly seventy, and note the other figure in the same profile: fewer than a dozen commercial cassettes across the whole career, the first in 1978. In a decade when other singers were putting out an album a season, she was not.",[33,176,178],{"id":177},"awards-and-a-count-that-does-not-settle","Awards, and a count that does not settle",[12,180,181,182,19,185,188,189,192,193,196],{},"Her first Sarasaviya Award came in 1984, for ",[16,183,184],{},"බෝධියේ විහාරයේ",[21,186,187],{},"Bodhiye Viharaye"," from the film ",[21,190,191],{},"Athin Athata",", and she took the award for film backing vocals again in 1988, 1992 and 2006. Most sources therefore call her a four-time Sarasaviya winner. The 2010 Sunday Observer profile says five, without listing the fifth; the discrepancy has never been resolved in print, so the safe statement is four documented wins and a persistent claim of a fifth. She also received a Presidential Award in 1986, a Sumathi Award in 1996 for a song in the teledrama ",[21,194,195],{},"Sankranthi Samaya",", and a Zonta Award and a Vanitha Award along the way.",[12,198,199,200,203,204,207],{},"She composed as well as sang, which is easy to miss. Amaradeva, Sanath Nandasiri and Victor Ratnayake all recorded her melodies, as did T. M. Jayaratne, Pradeepa Dharmadasa and her husband, the singer Kapila Herath. She was music director of the teledrama ",[21,201,202],{},"Nikini Wessa",". In 2013 she staged ",[21,205,206],{},"Bonikko"," at the Nelum Pokuna — twenty-eight children's songs in one evening, with a companion songbook printing lyrics, chords and illustrations so that children could actually play them. Her stated argument that night was as blunt as her singing was not: a child is a child, not a small adult.",[12,209,210],{},"Alongside all of this she taught. She joined Vincent Somapala's Gayathri Art Institute as a trainee teacher in 1969 and taught in schools for twenty-three years, eight of them at Visakha Vidyalaya in Colombo, retiring early in 1998. In 2002 she founded a charity, The Mother, for children, the elderly and artists who had given a lifetime to the field and been left with nothing.",[33,212,214],{"id":213},"milan","Milan",[12,216,217],{},"In September 2021 the government appointed her Consul General of Sri Lanka in Milan — an unusual second career for a singer, and one she had barely begun. She died there of cardiac arrest on 17 January 2022, aged seventy-one, still in office. Her body was treated at the San Raffaele hospital in Milan and repatriated to Sri Lanka on 27 January; her remains were brought to her home at Pepiliyana, and the funeral was held at Kanatte on 29 January 2022. She was survived by her husband, Kapila Herath.",[12,219,220,221,223],{},"The obituaries reached, understandably, for ",[21,222,84],{}," — a song of parting, sounding in the heart. It was the one that had launched her in the cinema forty-three years earlier, and it made a neater ending than anyone would have designed.",{"title":225,"searchDepth":226,"depth":226,"links":227},"",2,[228,229,230,231],{"id":35,"depth":226,"text":36},{"id":66,"depth":226,"text":67},{"id":177,"depth":226,"text":178},{"id":213,"depth":226,"text":214},"30 March 1950","The four-time Sarasaviya winner whose voice carried 'Master Sir' for thirty years, who taught schoolgirls music for twenty-three, and who died in office as Sri Lanka's Consul General in Milan.","17 January 2022","1960s-2020s","md","\u002Fimages\u002Fpeople\u002Fneela-wickramasinghe.webp","Gossip Lanka News","Unverified — fallback source","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.gossiplankanews.com\u002F2022\u002F01\u002Fneela-wicremasinghe-passed-away.html",{},true,"\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fneela-wickramasinghe",[245,246,247],"Singer","Composer","Music Director",{"title":5,"description":233},[250,253,256,259,262,265,268,271],{"title":251,"url":252},"Neela Wickramasinghe — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FNeela_Wickramasinghe",{"title":254,"url":255},"නීලා වික්‍රමසිංහ — සිංහල විකිපීඩියා","https:\u002F\u002Fsi.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002F%E0%B6%B1%E0%B7%93%E0%B6%BD%E0%B7%8F_%E0%B7%80%E0%B7%92%E0%B6%9A%E0%B7%8A%E2%80%8D%E0%B6%BB%E0%B6%B8%E0%B7%83%E0%B7%92%E0%B6%82%E0%B7%84",{"title":257,"url":258},"Popular songstress Neela Wickramasinghe passes away in Italy — Daily Mirror, 17 January 2022","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.dailymirror.lk\u002Flatest_news\u002FPopular-songstress-Neela-Wickramasinghe-passes-away-in-Italy\u002F342-229201",{"title":260,"url":261},"Veteran singer Neela Wickramasinghe passes away — Ada Derana, 17 January 2022","http:\u002F\u002Fwww.adaderana.lk\u002Fnews\u002F79947\u002Fveteran-singer-neela-wickramasinghe-passes-away",{"title":263,"url":264},"Versatile playback singer — Sunday Observer, 8 August 2010","https:\u002F\u002Farchives.sundayobserver.lk\u002F2010\u002F08\u002F08\u002Fmon14.asp",{"title":266,"url":267},"The celestial voice that bears the tonal signature — Sunday Observer, 11 March 2012","https:\u002F\u002Farchives.sundayobserver.lk\u002F2012\u002F03\u002F11\u002Fspe01.asp",{"title":269,"url":270},"\"Master Sir\" I first sang in 1973 — Sarasaviya, 23 October 2014","https:\u002F\u002Farchives.sarasaviya.lk\u002F2014\u002F10\u002F23\u002F?fn=sa14102343",{"title":272,"url":273},"Neela Wickramasinghe takes \"Bonikko\" — Sarasaviya, 26 September 2013","https:\u002F\u002Farchives.sarasaviya.lk\u002F2013\u002F09\u002F26\u002F?fn=sa13092613","en\u002Fpeople\u002Fneela-wickramasinghe","2DKFNFBsjLsikCbS3OqQfGjgFf6ncv9n0onoLcWeLhk",1787999332849]