[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":255},["ShallowReactive",2],{"person-en-saman-chandranath-weerasinghe":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"artistId":6,"birthYear":7,"body":8,"born":221,"description":222,"died":223,"era":224,"extension":225,"heroImage":226,"imageCredit":67,"imageLicense":227,"imageSource":228,"meta":229,"navigation":230,"notable":231,"path":232,"roles":233,"seo":236,"sources":237,"stem":253,"translated":230,"url":240,"__hash__":254},"peopleEn\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fsaman-chandranath-weerasinghe.md","Saman Chandranath Weerasinghe",493,1947,{"type":9,"value":10,"toc":212},"minimark",[11,20,23,28,38,41,44,48,58,72,76,92,109,116,134,138,152,180,190,194,205],[12,13,14,15,19],"p",{},"The first story he ever wrote was about a man who kills himself. A farmer plants a bitter-gourd vine, thieves break into the plot, and the shock of it finishes him. The boy showed it to his father — who was the editor-in-chief of ",[16,17,18],"em",{},"Lankadeepa",", so it was not an unreasonable person to show it to — and his father tore the pages up and threw them away. Saman writes about how people live in the middle of problems, he said. Not how to die.",[12,21,22],{},"The son took the correction. Across fifty years of lyrics, Saman Chandranath Weerasinghe wrote farmers, riverbanks, small towns, first love and dawn work-songs, and almost never wrote despair.",[24,25,27],"h2",{"id":26},"the-education-that-kept-collapsing","The education that kept collapsing",[12,29,30,31,33,34,37],{},"He was born on 5 July 1947 in Moratuwa, into a newspaper household: his father Wimal Weerasinghe edited ",[16,32,18],{},", and his brother Bharathi Weerasinghe became a journalist and creative writer as well. Sources disagree about his exact age — the ",[16,35,36],{},"Sunday Observer"," put him at 75 when he died, Wikipedia at 74, and at least one news site reported 77 — so the 1947 birth year given here should be treated as the best-attested figure rather than a settled one.",[12,39,40],{},"He was put into Prince of Wales College, Moratuwa, to study science in English. Then the Official Language Act changed the medium of instruction under him and his schooling fell apart. Around the same time a serious car accident kept him at home for about a year and a half, and in that long empty stretch he started writing seriously. His father took him to the monk Mapalagama Vipulasara Thera, and he studied arts for four months at the Paramadhamma Chethiya Pirivena in Ratmalana, then went to the Pinwatta Pirivena in Panadura for his A-Levels. That ended too, and characteristically: asked by his Sinhala teacher why a certain celebrated book was a masterpiece, he answered that it was not a great book. There was a rift, and he left.",[12,42,43],{},"So the man who would write more than a thousand songs in Sinhala never finished a formal education in it.",[24,45,47],{"id":46},"a-dead-mans-column","A dead man's column",[12,49,50,51,53,54,57],{},"He joined ",[16,52,18],{}," as a freelance in December 1969. A columnist there, Cyrus Surendra, who wrote a column called ",[16,55,56],{},"Kaalaye Satahan"," (\"notes of the times\"), died suddenly — and the paper asked the pirivena student to carry it on. He did, and stayed on and off for fifteen years.",[12,59,60,61,64,65,68,69,71],{},"Off as much as on. He left in 1975, pushed out under the government of the day; he came back to the editorial board; he resigned as assistant editor in 1984, shortly before the whole of Times of Ceylon Limited shut down. Later he held a string of posts at ",[16,62,63],{},"Dinamina",", was feature editor and co-editor at ",[16,66,67],{},"Silumina",", and retired as ",[16,70,63],{},"'s consultant editor. He was vice-president of the Songwriters' Forum set up in the early 1990s and took part in the union campaign around intellectual property — the unglamorous fight over whether a lyricist owns anything at all once the record is pressed.",[24,73,75],{"id":74},"songs-before-the-six-oclock-news","Songs before the six o'clock news",[12,77,78,79,82,83,87,88,91],{},"His first published lyric was written at school, for a devotional song competition in Panadura; it was sung by another schoolchild, Neela Wickramasinghe, who would become one of the country's leading voices. His first radio song proper was \"Hetak Gange Sithala\", written in 1971 for Punsiri Soysa on a ",[16,80,81],{},"sarala gee"," programme, and Soysa went on singing his words for years: \"Sewwandiyakata Pem Banda\", \"Rusiru Dasunak\", ",[84,85,86],"strong",{},"බිඳුවක් ඉවසා"," ",[16,89,90],{},"Biduwak Iwasa"," (\"bear one drop of it\"), \"Ganga Diyawela Gala\".",[12,93,94,95,87,98,101,102,87,105,108],{},"The first of his lyrics to be broadcast at all was a patriotic piece, \"Muthuketa Mathuwuna Maha Sayurai\", sung by C. L. Fonseka to music by Rohitha Wijesuriya. He gave Sunil Edirisinghe his first radio song, ",[84,96,97],{},"වාදකයාණෙනි",[16,99,100],{},"Wadakayaneni"," (\"O musicians\"), and Malini Bulathsinhala her first outing as a solo singer, ",[84,103,104],{},"සඳ මඬලේ සිට",[16,106,107],{},"Sanda Madale Sita"," (\"from the disc of the moon\"), a song embedded in a radio play.",[12,110,111,112,115],{},"Then there is the strangest entry in his catalogue. ",[16,113,114],{},"Samakoni Thrikonayaki"," — \"it is a right-angled triangle\" — was written for Dayarathna Ranatunga and is generally described as the first geometry song in Sinhala. It is a love song conducted entirely in the vocabulary of a school maths class, and it works.",[12,117,118,119,87,122,125,126,129,130,133],{},"Much of his 1970s output went into the early-morning radio slot. Songs like ",[84,120,121],{},"සොඳුර මට සමුදෙන්න",[16,123,124],{},"Sondura Mata Samudenna"," (\"my dear, say goodbye to me\") were carried on the programmes ",[16,127,128],{},"Prabuddha Gee"," and ",[16,131,132],{},"Ran Kethai Kammalai",", broadcast between 5.45 and 6.00 in the morning, just before the news, and aimed squarely at the food-production drive of the period. \"Nabara Goyamata Rahas\", sung by Gunadasa Kapuge, belongs to the same effort: a state campaign to get paddy planted, turned into something people actually hummed.",[24,135,137],{"id":136},"sarath-and-the-long-partnership","Sarath, and the long partnership",[12,139,140,141,87,144,147,148,151],{},"The collaboration that defined the second half of his career was with the composer Sarath Dassanayake. It began with a radio signature piece, \"Nawa Rasa Dhara\", and ran for more than twenty years, producing among much else ",[84,142,143],{},"හිම රේණු වැටෙනා",[16,145,146],{},"Hima Renu Watena"," (\"as the snowflakes fall\"), which is the song most people name first when his name comes up. Years later he co-wrote the lyrics for the film ",[16,149,150],{},"Hadawatha Mal Yayai"," with Dassanayake's son, Ranga.",[12,153,154,155,157,158,87,161,164,165,87,168,171,172,175,176,179],{},"His singers came from every direction and generation — Latha Walpola and Greshan Ananda on ",[16,156,146],{},", D. D. Gunasena, Paul Fernando, Sujatha Attanayake, Keerthi Pasquel, Rookantha Gunathilake and Chandraleka Perera on ",[84,159,160],{},"සඳ ලේඛා",[16,162,163],{},"Sanda Lekha",", Amal Perera on ",[84,166,167],{},"ලස්සනයි ආදරේ",[16,169,170],{},"Lassanai Adare",". He wrote film songs from ",[16,173,174],{},"Sheela"," in 1974 to ",[16,177,178],{},"The Game"," in 2022, the year he died. Alongside it he worked as an advertising consultant and chaired the National Lotteries Board's advertising procurement committee, which is a very newspaperman way of paying for a poet's habits.",[12,181,182,183,185,186,189],{},"How many lyrics in total? The ",[16,184,36],{}," said more than 1,500; the ",[16,187,188],{},"Daily News"," and Wikipedia say more than 2,000. Nobody has counted them properly, and the honest answer is somewhere in that band.",[24,191,193],{"id":192},"say-goodbye-to-me","Say goodbye to me",[12,195,196,197,200,201,204],{},"He died on 15 February 2022 at the National Hospital in Colombo, and was cremated at the Borella general cemetery two days later, in front of a crowd of relatives, artistes and journalists. ",[16,198,199],{},"Sarasaviya"," headlined its farewell with one of his own lines — ",[16,202,203],{},"sondura mata samudenna",", my dear, say goodbye to me — which is the sort of thing that only works if the songs were good enough to be quoted back.",[12,206,207,208,211],{},"He described himself once, in an interview, as ",[16,209,210],{},"debiddek",": a double person. The journalist and the lyricist never quite merged. The first wrote against injustice and lost jobs for it; the second wrote about morning fields and moonlight and never, after that first torn-up story, about giving up.",{"title":213,"searchDepth":214,"depth":214,"links":215},"",2,[216,217,218,219,220],{"id":26,"depth":214,"text":27},{"id":46,"depth":214,"text":47},{"id":74,"depth":214,"text":75},{"id":136,"depth":214,"text":137},{"id":192,"depth":214,"text":193},"5 July 1947","A newspaperman first and a lyricist by night, he wrote the dawn broadcasts that woke Sri Lanka up, gave Sunil Edirisinghe his first radio song, and turned a geometry lesson into a hit.","15 February 2022","1960s-2020s","md","\u002Fimages\u002Fpeople\u002Fsaman-chandranath-weerasinghe.webp","Unverified — fallback source","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.silumina.lk\u002F2022\u002F02\u002F15\u002F%E0%B6%B4%E0%B7%94%E0%B7%80%E0%B6%AD%E0%B7%8A\u002F%E0%B6%B4%E0%B7%8A%E2%80%8D%E0%B6%BB%E0%B7%80%E0%B7%93%E0%B6%AB-%E0%B6%9C%E0%B7%93%E0%B6%AD-%E0%B6%BB%E0%B6%A0%E0%B6%9A-%E0%B7%83%E0%B6%B8%E0%B6%B1%E0%B7%8A-%E0%B6%A0%E0%B6%B1%E0%B7%8A%E0%B6%AF%E0%B7%8A%E2%80%8D%E0%B6%BB%E0%B6%B1%E0%B7%8F%E0%B6%AD%E0%B7%8A-%E0%B7%80%E0%B7%93%E0%B6%BB%E0%B7%83%E0%B7%92%E0%B6%82%E0%B7%84-%E0%B6%85%E0%B6%B7%E0%B7%80%E0%B6%B4%E0%B7%8A%E2%80%8D%E0%B6%BB%E0%B7%8F%E0%B6%B4%E0%B7%8A%E0%B6%AD-%E0%B7%80%E0%B7%99%E0%B6%BA%E0%B7%92",{},true,false,"\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fsaman-chandranath-weerasinghe",[234,235],"Lyricist","Poet",{"title":5,"description":222},[238,241,244,247,250],{"title":239,"url":240},"Saman Chandranath Weerasinghe — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FSaman_Chandranath_Weerasinghe",{"title":242,"url":243},"Saman Chandranath Weerasinghe is no more — Sunday Observer, 20 February 2022","https:\u002F\u002Farchives1.sundayobserver.lk\u002F2022\u002F02\u002F20\u002Fnews\u002Fsaman-chandranath-weerasinghe-no-more",{"title":245,"url":246},"සොඳුර මට සමුදෙන්න, සමුදෙන්න — සරසවිය, 17 February 2022","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.sarasaviya.lk\u002Fstory\u002F2022\u002F02\u002F17\u002F22462\u002F%E0%B7%83%E0%B7%9C%E0%B6%B3%E0%B7%94%E0%B6%BB-%E0%B6%B8%E0%B6%A7-%E0%B7%83%E0%B6%B8%E0%B7%94%E0%B6%AF%E0%B7%99%E0%B6%B1%E0%B7%8A%E0%B6%B1-%E0%B7%83%E0%B6%B8%E0%B7%94%E0%B6%AF%E0%B7%99%E0%B6%B1%E0%B7%8A%E0%B6%B1",{"title":248,"url":249},"මම දෙබිඩ්ඩෙක් — සරසවිය, 30 May 2019","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.sarasaviya.lk\u002Ffeatures\u002F2019\u002F05\u002F30\u002F5575\u002F%E0%B6%B8%E0%B6%B8-%E0%B6%AF%E0%B7%99%E0%B6%B6%E0%B7%92%E0%B6%A9%E0%B7%8A%E0%B6%A9%E0%B7%99%E0%B6%9A%E0%B7%8A",{"title":251,"url":252},"Saman Chandranath Weerasinghe Songs — LK Lyrics","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.lklyrics.com\u002Fartist\u002Fsaman_chandranath_weerasinghe","en\u002Fpeople\u002Fsaman-chandranath-weerasinghe","ET1LrdpDTuJIIG_FQFET18GnnuZpONie4p70YEu2U20",1787999333486]