[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":315},["ShallowReactive",2],{"person-en-patrick-denipitiya":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"artistId":6,"birthYear":7,"body":8,"born":279,"description":280,"died":281,"era":282,"extension":283,"heroImage":284,"imageCredit":285,"imageLicense":286,"imageSource":287,"meta":288,"navigation":289,"notable":290,"path":291,"roles":292,"seo":296,"sources":297,"stem":313,"translated":289,"url":300,"__hash__":314},"peopleEn\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fpatrick-denipitiya.md","Patrick Denipitiya",446,1934,{"type":9,"value":10,"toc":270},"minimark",[11,15,18,23,26,34,37,41,44,47,50,54,65,96,99,103,128,223,226,245,249,260,263],[12,13,14],"p",{},"Play almost any C. T. Fernando record and wait for the moment the melody stops being plucked and starts to slide — one note bending smoothly into the next, the way a voice does, with no frets in the way. That sound is a steel bar held against the strings of a guitar laid flat across the player's knees. It arrived in Sinhala music in the 1950s, and the man holding the bar was almost always Patrick Denipitiya.",[12,16,17],{},"His name is on hardly any of the record labels. That is the point of him.",[19,20,22],"h2",{"id":21},"kotahena-and-free-lessons-from-sunil-santha","Kotahena, and free lessons from Sunil Santha",[12,24,25],{},"Patrick Tibertius Maximus Denipitiya was born on 11 August 1934 in Kotahena, in the crowded Catholic north of Colombo, one of ten children of Coronalis Denipitiya, a railway stationmaster, and Mary Simona Fernando. He went to St Benedict's College in Colombo and then to St Aloysius' College in Galle.",[12,27,28,29,33],{},"His first music teacher was ",[30,31,32],"strong",{},"Sunil Santha"," — the composer who a few years later would refuse to sit Radio Ceylon's grading examination and walk away from broadcasting altogether. Santha, by the family's account, kept teaching the boy for nothing and used him on his own recordings. Whatever else that gave him, it gave him a model: a musician who read and wrote music properly and thought about what a Sinhala song ought to be built from.",[12,35,36],{},"Denipitiya himself became a formidable reader and writer of scores. His biography records an unusual skill — that he could write out a full orchestral arrangement, for an ensemble mixing Eastern and Western instruments, in both Eastern and Western notation, without touching an instrument to check it. In an industry where most arranging was done by humming at players until they got it, that made him extremely useful.",[19,38,40],{"id":39},"the-guitar-that-slides","The guitar that slides",[12,42,43],{},"The instrument he is credited with introducing goes by several names: Hawaiian guitar, lap slide, lap steel. It is played horizontally, the strings stopped not by fingers but by a smooth steel bar, which is why it glides rather than steps. Amplified, it has a keening, vocal quality that suits a sung melody, and it had already travelled from Hawaii into American country music and into Indian film scoring by the time it reached Colombo.",[12,45,46],{},"Denipitiya brought the electric version into Sinhala popular music, and it stuck. The claim carries a mild health warning: English Wikipedia's article flags it as needing a citation, but Ada Derana's 2013 obituary states it independently — \"Denipitiya, who famously introduced the Hawaiian guitar to the country's music scene decades ago\" — which is about as settled as this kind of first ever gets. He was also, on the same accounts, among the first to bring pop-band instrumentation into the oriental-music side of the industry in the early 1960s.",[12,48,49],{},"He played a great deal else: piano, harmonium, acoustic guitar and, later, electronic keyboard. A session player who covers that spread does not get sent home when the arrangement changes.",[19,51,53],{"id":52},"rocksamy-latiff-and-denipitiya","Rocksamy, Latiff and Denipitiya",[12,55,56,57,60,61,64],{},"For close to thirty years the same three men turned up to most Sinhala film-song and background-music sessions: ",[30,58,59],{},"M. K. Rocksamy",", a Tamil violinist, saxophonist and tabla player who also directed film music in his own right; ",[30,62,63],{},"T. K. Latiff",", a Muslim musician; and Denipitiya, a Sinhalese Catholic. Their friendship, and the fact that three communities were sitting in the same small studio playing the same music, is remembered in the accounts of that era as plainly as the music is.",[12,66,67,68,71,72,71,75,78,79,82,83,87,88,91,92,95],{},"Around them worked a wider circle whose names survive mostly as credits: ",[30,69,70],{},"Mohamed Sally",", ",[30,73,74],{},"Galagedara M. Haq",[30,76,77],{},"Sarath Balasooriya",". Denipitiya wrote scores for the music directors ",[30,80,81],{},"R. Muttusamy"," — his first was for the song ",[84,85,86],"em",{},"Chandraya Paayala"," in ",[84,89,90],{},"Prema Tharange",", sung by Latha Walpola — and ",[30,93,94],{},"P. L. A. Somapala",", and worked with visiting Indian composers including T. R. Papa, doing the part of the job that has no title: turning somebody else's tune into something a room full of players can perform.",[12,97,98],{},"This is the invisible craft. A Sinhala song of that period usually credits three people — singer, lyricist, composer — and the sleeve stops there. The arrangement, which is what actually makes the record sound like itself, and the players who executed it are simply absent from the record. Denipitiya's career is a reminder that the histories of Sinhala song written from record labels alone are missing a whole profession.",[19,100,102],{"id":101},"the-songs-he-made-sound-like-that","The songs he made sound like that",[12,104,105,106,71,109,112,113,116,117,120,121,71,124,127],{},"Where he is credited, the list is substantial. He was music director for original songs by ",[30,107,108],{},"C. T. Fernando",[30,110,111],{},"Milton Mallawarachchi",", C. D. Fonseka, Susil Premaratne, Angeline Gunathilake, Mallika Kahawita, Christopher Paul, ",[30,114,115],{},"H. R. Jothipala",", Henry Caldera, ",[30,118,119],{},"Latha Walpola",", Sujatha Attanayake, Indrani Perera, Rupa Indumathi, ",[30,122,123],{},"M. S. Fernando",[30,125,126],{},"Freddie Silva"," and Ivor Dennis, and for calypso groups including The J Brothers and Samanalayo.",[12,129,130,131,134,135,138,139,134,142,145,146,134,149,152,153,134,156,159,160,134,163,166,167,134,170,173,174,134,177,180,181,134,184,187,188,134,191,194,195,134,198,201,202,134,205,208,209,134,212,215,216,219,220,222],{},"A number of C. T. Fernando's best-known records became hits under his direction and arrangement: ",[30,132,133],{},"සිහින ලොවේ"," ",[84,136,137],{},"Sihina Lowe"," (\"in a world of dreams\"), ",[30,140,141],{},"හෙළ ජාතික අභිමානේ",[84,143,144],{},"Hela Jathika Abhimane"," (\"pride of the Sinhala nation\"), ",[30,147,148],{},"මා බාල කාලේ",[84,150,151],{},"Ma Bala Kale"," (\"in my childhood\"), ",[30,154,155],{},"සඳවට රන් තරු",[84,157,158],{},"Sandawata Ran Tharu"," (\"golden stars around the moon\"), ",[30,161,162],{},"මල් ලෝකේ රාණි",[84,164,165],{},"Mal Loke Rani"," (\"queen of the world of flowers\") and ",[30,168,169],{},"පුන්සඳ හිනැහෙන්නේ",[84,171,172],{},"Punsanda Hinahenne"," (\"the full moon is smiling\"). For Milton Mallawarachchi he composed ",[30,175,176],{},"සයුරු තෙරේදී",[84,178,179],{},"Sayuru Theredi"," (\"on the sea shore\"), ",[30,182,183],{},"මා නිසා ඔබ",[84,185,186],{},"Ma Nisa Oba"," (\"you, because of me\") and ",[30,189,190],{},"රැයක් උපද්දා",[84,192,193],{},"Rayak Upadda",". For Jothipala there were ",[30,196,197],{},"පුළුන් වගෙයි සුදු රැවුල දිගයි",[84,199,200],{},"Pulun Wagei Sudu Rawula Digai"," (\"like cotton, the long white beard\") and ",[30,203,204],{},"උමයන්ගනියෝ",[84,206,207],{},"Umayanganiyo","; for M. S. Fernando, Angeline Gunathilake and Nimala Atapattu, ",[30,210,211],{},"නෙළුම් මලේ පෙති කඩලා",[84,213,214],{},"Nelum Male Pethi Kadala"," (\"plucking the petals of the lotus\"). He is also credited with composing the first Sinhala group song, ",[84,217,218],{},"Udarata Menike Manahara Kandurata Thilake",", and with singing on a few recordings himself, including ",[84,221,137],{}," alongside C. T. Fernando in its original Radio Ceylon version.",[12,224,225],{},"His own biography claims a working total of more than five thousand commercial and film-song recordings directed, played on or assisted. That is the artist's own figure and there is no independent count; in this subject such totals are usually generous, and it is safer to say that his playing is on far more Sinhala records than his name is.",[12,227,228,229,232,233,236,237,240,241,244],{},"In cinema, films.lk records three films with him as music director — ",[84,230,231],{},"Sengavuna Manika"," (1967), the box-office hit ",[84,234,235],{},"Sanakeliya"," (1974) and ",[84,238,239],{},"Loka Horu"," (1976) — with further co-direction credits, including work with P. L. A. Somapala on ",[84,242,243],{},"Sawudan Jema",".",[19,246,248],{"id":247},"the-combo-canada-and-a-long-silence","The Combo, Canada, and a long silence",[12,250,251,252,255,256,259],{},"Denipitiya ran his own band, the Patrick Denipitiya Combo, from the 1960s: sweepstake-draw shows, the Maliban ",[84,253,254],{},"Guwan Totilla"," broadcasts, the Kandy Lake Club, Sugathadasa Indoor Stadium. When television came the Combo turned up on ITN's ",[84,257,258],{},"Madhu Rasangha"," and on Rupavahini programmes. He toured Europe with C. T. Fernando in 1969, Canada and the United States with H. R. Jothipala, and Europe again with the Somapalas and with M. S. Fernando. (A widely repeated story that he met George Harrison on the 1969 tour sits in an unreferenced part of his Wikipedia article and has no source behind it.)",[12,261,262],{},"Music never paid the bills alone. He worked at the Census Department, then at Lake House and its bookshop, and taught music theory, guitar, piano and keyboard — by his family's account without charging for it, including to the children of Amaradeva and of a former SLBC chairman.",[12,264,265,266,269],{},"He migrated to Canada in 1990 and kept working there, directing music for Sri Lankan concerts and community productions. In 1997, home in Sri Lanka for his elder son's wedding, he suffered a stroke that left him partly paralysed. He lived another sixteen years, cared for by his wife Celcie, whom he had married in 1961, and died in Brampton, Ontario on 23 March 2013. His son ",[30,267,268],{},"Mahesh Denipitiya"," is one of the best-known music directors and arrangers in Sri Lanka today — which is to say that the family trade survived, and that the arranging chair Patrick Denipitiya sat in for forty years is still occupied.",{"title":271,"searchDepth":272,"depth":272,"links":273},"",2,[274,275,276,277,278],{"id":21,"depth":272,"text":22},{"id":39,"depth":272,"text":40},{"id":52,"depth":272,"text":53},{"id":101,"depth":272,"text":102},{"id":247,"depth":272,"text":248},"11 August 1934","The man who brought the sliding Hawaiian guitar into Sinhala song, and who — with Rocksamy and Latiff — sat in on so many film and radio sessions that his playing is on records nobody credits him for.","23 March 2013","1950s-1990s","md","\u002Fimages\u002Fpeople\u002Fpatrick-denipitiya.webp","eLanka (Sunil Thenabadu)","Unverified — fallback source","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.elanka.com.au\u002Fpatrick-denipitiya-the-music-maestro-icon-the-musician-who-has-contributed-most-to-native-sri-lankan-music-having-revolutionised-our-music-for-over-three-decades-by-sunil-thenabadu\u002F",{},true,false,"\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fpatrick-denipitiya",[293,294,295],"Musician","Composer","Music Director",{"title":5,"description":280},[298,301,304,307,310],{"title":299,"url":300},"Patrick Denipitiya — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FPatrick_Denipitiya",{"title":302,"url":303},"'Patrick Denipitiya passes away' — Ada Derana, 24 March 2013","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.adaderana.lk\u002Fnews\u002F22096",{"title":305,"url":306},"Patrick Denipitiya — films.lk, Digital Identity of Sinhala Cinema","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.films.lk\u002Fsinhala-cinema-artist-patrick-denipitiya-5086.html",{"title":308,"url":309},"M. K. Rocksamy — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FM._K._Rocksamy",{"title":311,"url":312},"Lap steel guitar — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FLap_steel_guitar","en\u002Fpeople\u002Fpatrick-denipitiya","X2g5IhSTve-7PqrmUMbyQfMZNFiyYi9BX9CkKdwfmZg",1787999333032]