[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":319},["ShallowReactive",2],{"person-en-p-l-a-somapala":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"artistId":6,"birthYear":7,"body":8,"born":282,"description":283,"died":284,"era":285,"extension":286,"heroImage":287,"imageCredit":288,"imageLicense":289,"imageSource":290,"meta":291,"navigation":292,"notable":293,"path":294,"roles":295,"seo":300,"sources":301,"stem":317,"translated":292,"url":304,"__hash__":318},"peopleEn\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fp-l-a-somapala.md","P. L. A. Somapala",620,1921,{"type":9,"value":10,"toc":273},"minimark",[11,20,27,32,35,38,46,53,57,60,133,139,143,146,153,156,160,179,221,253,257,260,266],[12,13,14,15,19],"p",{},"Sometime around 1946 a young Radio Ceylon musician wrote a tune for a woman he had recently met, and then did something nobody had done to a Sinhala song before. He put a clarinet on it. Then a saxophone, a piano, a guitar, a drummer and a double bass. The song was ",[16,17,18],"em",{},"Yamuna Yamuna Sobana",", the woman was Chithra Perera, and between them they would spend the next forty years being simultaneously the most popular and the most criticised musicians in the country.",[12,21,22,23,26],{},"The criticism had a nickname attached. In an art form that was busy deciding what a genuinely Sinhala music ought to sound like, P. L. A. Somapala was written off by some of his contemporaries as a ",[16,24,25],{},"brass-band musician",".",[28,29,31],"h2",{"id":30},"a-clerk-who-went-to-see-the-master","A clerk who went to see the master",[12,33,34],{},"Peragaswatte Liyana Acharige Somapala was born on 13 September 1921 in Maligakanda, Colombo 10. His father, A. D. Edmund, produced stage plays, so the boy grew up around a working theatre. He was schooled at Lawrence College in Maradana, left in 1941 after his Junior School Certificate, and took a clerk's job with a rubber exporter in a Maliban Street office.",[12,36,37],{},"What moved him were the gramophone records Ananda Samarakoon was making for His Master's Voice. So he went to see Lionel Edirisinghe — the musicologist who would later build the country's entire state music-education system — and learned to play the sitar. He also studied under the musician T. Sandarasekara, and took up the violin.",[12,39,40,41,45],{},"It worked quickly. Accounts differ on the year, Wikipedia dating his qualification as a radio artist to 1942 and the Sooriya Records biography giving 1943 for his appointment as a sitar and violin player, but by the middle of the war he was inside Radio Ceylon and playing alongside Samarakoon himself, Surya Sankar Molligoda, M. G. Perera and A. A. Sanghadasa. His first recorded song was made with ",[42,43,44],"strong",{},"Sunil Santha"," and Molligoda.",[12,47,48,49,52],{},"The Sooriya biography adds a striking detail: that on 4 February 1948, the day Ceylon became independent, Somapala played the sitar at the singing of the national anthem. That needs unpicking rather than repeating, because Ceylon had no anthem of its own on independence day — it kept \"God Save the King,\" and what Radio Ceylon broadcast that morning was ",[16,50,51],{},"Sri Lanka Matha Pala Yasa Mahima",", the winner of the pre-independence competition, composed by Lionel Edirisinghe. If the story is true, the music his sitar accompanied was his own teacher's — but no source says so outright.",[28,54,56],{"id":55},"the-duo","The duo",[12,58,59],{},"Somapala met Chithra Perera, eleven years his junior, as a young vocalist — Wikipedia places the meeting in 1942 while she was a schoolgirl at St Bridget's Convent, the Sooriya account at a radio programme in 1946. They first sang together in 1946, married on 27 September 1952, and from then on almost everything he composed, she sang.",[12,61,62,63,66,67,70,71,66,74,77,78,66,81,84,85,66,88,91,92,66,95,98,99,66,102,105,106,66,109,112,113,66,116,77,119,66,122,125,126,66,129,132],{},"What they made in those years is the backbone of the early Sinhala light-classical repertoire: ",[42,64,65],{},"දඹුළු ගලේ"," ",[16,68,69],{},"Dambulu Gale"," (\"at the Dambulla rock\"), ",[42,72,73],{},"සුකොමල බඳ ලෙලවා",[16,75,76],{},"Sukomala Banda Lelawa",", ",[42,79,80],{},"උඩරට කඳුකර සිරියා පරදන",[16,82,83],{},"Udarata Kandukara Siriya Paradana"," (\"outdoing the beauty of the up-country hills\"), ",[42,86,87],{},"ඉසුරුමුණියෙහි පැතලි ගලක හිඳ",[16,89,90],{},"Isurumuniyehi Pathali Galaka Hinda"," (\"seated on a flat rock at Isurumuniya\"), ",[42,93,94],{},"නුවර වැවේ",[16,96,97],{},"Nuwara Wawe"," (\"on the Kandy lake\"), ",[42,100,101],{},"දකුණු ලකේ",[16,103,104],{},"Dakunu Lake"," (\"in the south of Lanka\"), ",[42,107,108],{},"කුරුළු ගමේ කුරුළු ගෙදර",[16,110,111],{},"Kurulu Game Kurulu Gedara"," (\"bird village, bird house\"), ",[42,114,115],{},"ලලිත කලා",[16,117,118],{},"Lalitha Kala",[42,120,121],{},"පෙම්බර මාතා",[16,123,124],{},"Pembara Matha"," (\"beloved mother\") and ",[42,127,128],{},"කිරි උතුරන ලංකා",[16,130,131],{},"Kiri Uthurana Lanka",". Read the titles together and the programme is obvious. These are songs about places — Dambulla, Isurumuniya, Kandy, the southern coast — written for a country that had just acquired the right to sing about itself.",[12,134,135,136,138],{},"They recorded for Columbia and for His Master's Voice and performed as a stage duo, which in the 1950s was still unusual for a married couple. One story attached to ",[16,137,18],{}," is told often enough to name and not quite well enough to state as fact: that the daughter of the Governor-General, Lord Soulbury, asked for the song and had it sent to His Master's Voice to be pressed and distributed abroad. It appears in the Sri Lankan press but without a document behind it.",[28,140,142],{"id":141},"the-brass-band-musician","The brass-band musician",[12,144,145],{},"The instruments were the argument. Sinhala radio music at the time was built on Indian and indigenous instruments, and the saxophone, trumpet and clarinet had no place in it. Somapala put them in anyway.",[12,147,148,149,152],{},"The Sooriya biography — quoting a 1998 ",[16,150,151],{},"Midweek Mirror"," piece by Gamini Akmeemana — records what followed: the addition became a controversy, critics of the era attacked it severely, and he was looked down on as the \"brass band musician.\" It also records the practical result, which is that listeners who had grown up on Western music and ignored oriental song started listening to Sinhala songs.",[12,154,155],{},"The second charge was heavier: that his melodies were lifted from Hindi and Tamil film songs. It was not baseless, and his own filmography is candid about it. He answered in print, in a Sinhala newspaper article headed, more or less, \"Why do I make hybrid music?\" — arguing that he was fitting Sinhala verse to melodies that reached local audiences. The available accounts date that article to 1952 while describing the accusations as peaking three decades later, so the chronology in the sources does not hang together and is best left unstated.",[28,157,159],{"id":158},"asoka-and-thirty-years-of-film-scores","Asoka, and thirty years of film scores",[12,161,162,163,166,167,170,171,174,175,178],{},"On 4 March 1955 the film ",[16,164,165],{},"Asoka",", directed by Sirisena Wimalaweera, opened, and Somapala was its music director. It was a hit, and every song in it was popular — and, as his own accounts admit, every song in it was taken from an Indian film, drawing on the Hindi pictures ",[16,168,169],{},"Anarkali"," and ",[16,172,173],{},"Dosth"," and the Tamil ",[16,176,177],{},"Avan",". Some numbers were recorded twice over, once in Ceylon and once in Madras.",[12,180,181,182,185,186,189,190,193,194,197,198,197,201,204,205,208,209,212,213,216,217,220],{},"He came back to cinema in 1956 on ",[16,183,184],{},"Dingiri Menika",", credited variously as assistant music director and as co-composer with the Indian musician S. S. Veda, and after that he did not stop: ",[16,187,188],{},"Deyyange Rate"," (1958), ",[16,191,192],{},"Deepashika"," (1963), ",[16,195,196],{},"Hathara Maha Nidhanaya"," (1965), ",[16,199,200],{},"Sweep Ticket",[16,202,203],{},"Sudu Duwa"," (1966), ",[16,206,207],{},"Akka Nago"," (1968), ",[16,210,211],{},"Thushara"," (1973), ",[16,214,215],{},"Lassana Kella"," (1975), ",[16,218,219],{},"Senasuma"," (1981). How many there were in total is unsettled: Wikipedia and the Sooriya biography both say 51 films, while the films.lk database — the most careful public record of Sinhala cinema credits — lists twenty-seven as music director plus one as assistant. Take the higher figure as a career claim and the lower as what is currently documented.",[12,222,223,224,66,227,77,230,66,233,77,236,66,239,242,243,66,246,249,250,26],{},"Among the other songs credited to him as composer are ",[42,225,226],{},"පෙම්බර මධු මගේ",[16,228,229],{},"Pembara Madhu Mage",[42,231,232],{},"සිතුම් පැතුම් සඳ ආදරේ",[16,234,235],{},"Sithum Pathum Sanda Adare",[42,237,238],{},"කව්ද ඔබ කව්රුන්දෝ",[16,240,241],{},"Kawda Oba Kawrundo"," (\"who are you, whose are you\") and ",[42,244,245],{},"හිස් ටින් එකක් වාගෙයි අපේ මේ ජීවිතේ",[16,247,248],{},"His Tin Ekak Wagei Ape Me Jeewithe"," (\"this life of ours is like an empty tin\") — that last title being a fair sample of how far his range ran from the Isurumuniya songs. Most of his film lyrics came from ",[42,251,252],{},"Karunaratne Abeysekera",[28,254,256],{"id":255},"radio-television-and-the-end","Radio, television, and the end",[12,258,259],{},"The day job kept pace. He became Director of Music for Radio Ceylon's National and Commercial Services in 1958 and was promoted to Controller of Music in 1969, serving the broadcaster for close to four decades. When the Independent Television Network was taken over by the state in 1981 he was put in charge of its music division, which makes him, by the Sooriya account, the first producer of television music programmes in Sri Lanka.",[12,261,262,263,265],{},"He and Chithra toured — Britain, France and Switzerland in 1985, England, Wales and the United States in 1989. His awards are reported inconsistently: a Swarna Sankha film award in the mid-1960s, described variously as most popular musician of the year, best film music director, and a special award for ",[16,264,196],{},", and dated 1965 by some sources and 1966 by others; and an OCIC award in 1985.",[12,267,268,269,272],{},"Somapala died on 26 March 1991, aged sixty-nine. Here too the accounts split: Wikipedia says he had travelled to India for eye surgery and died there of cancer, while the Sooriya biography says only that he died in a private hospital and gives his age as seventy. Chithra died in 1994. Their youngest son, Chitral \"Chity\" Somapala, went on to a career of his own — a Sinhala hit in ",[16,270,271],{},"Nadee Ganga"," and a long run as a vocalist in European power metal, which is either a complete break from his father's work or exactly the family habit of importing an unfamiliar instrument and being told off for it.",{"title":274,"searchDepth":275,"depth":275,"links":276},"",2,[277,278,279,280,281],{"id":30,"depth":275,"text":31},{"id":55,"depth":275,"text":56},{"id":141,"depth":275,"text":142},{"id":158,"depth":275,"text":159},{"id":255,"depth":275,"text":256},"13 September 1921","The Radio Ceylon sitar player who put a saxophone into Sinhala song and was mocked as a brass-band musician for it — and who, with his wife Chithra, made the most recorded duo of the 1940s and 50s.","26 March 1991","1940s-1980s","md","\u002Fimages\u002Fpeople\u002Fp-l-a-somapala.webp","ගී මුතුමාල (Gee Muthumala) archive","Unverified — fallback source","http:\u002F\u002Fgeemuthumala.blogspot.com\u002F2021\u002F03\u002Fp-l-somapala-film-song-collection.html",{},true,false,"\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fp-l-a-somapala",[296,297,298,299],"Singer","Composer","Music Director","Producer",{"title":5,"description":283},[302,305,308,311,314],{"title":303,"url":304},"P. L. A. Somapala — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FP._L._A._Somapala",{"title":306,"url":307},"P.L.A. Somapala & Chitra Somapala — Sooriya Records biography (Internet Archive snapshot, 30 November 2022)","https:\u002F\u002Fweb.archive.org\u002Fweb\u002F20221130033543\u002Fhttps:\u002F\u002Fsooriya.lk\u002Fartist\u002Fp-l-a-somapala-chitra-somapala\u002F",{"title":309,"url":310},"P.L.A. Somapala — films.lk, Digital Identity of Sinhala Cinema","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.films.lk\u002Fsinhala-cinema-artist-pla-somapala-5083.html",{"title":312,"url":313},"'The Unforgettable Tunesmith: P.L.A. Somapala' — Daily Mirror, 17 September 2018","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.pressreader.com\u002Fsri-lanka\u002Fdaily-mirror-sri-lanka\u002F20180917\u002F282763472542032",{"title":315,"url":316},"Chitral Somapala — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FChitral_Somapala","en\u002Fpeople\u002Fp-l-a-somapala","i0WsiV_rMYk2o-CoA-vvkVuxKeY_9pBsM9atiRNaZxs",1787999333014]