[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":249},["ShallowReactive",2],{"person-en-shelton-premaratne":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"artistId":6,"birthYear":7,"body":8,"born":215,"description":216,"died":217,"era":218,"extension":219,"heroImage":220,"imageCredit":221,"imageLicense":222,"imageSource":223,"meta":224,"navigation":225,"notable":225,"path":226,"roles":227,"seo":231,"sources":232,"stem":247,"translated":225,"url":235,"__hash__":248},"peopleEn\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fshelton-premaratne.md","Shelton Premaratne",991,1931,{"type":9,"value":10,"toc":205},"minimark",[11,20,25,28,31,35,64,89,93,145,152,156,177,180,184,187,194,198],[12,13,14,15,19],"p",{},"There was a word for it, and the word was an insult. ",[16,17,18],"em",{},"Vacana danava"," — \"putting words\" — was what Sinhala songwriters of the early 1950s did: take a Hindi film melody, count its long and short syllables, and fit Sinhala words over the top like a careless mason laying one brick on another. The lyricist Chandraratne Manawasinghe, who lived through it, described the practice exactly that way. It was efficient, it was popular, and it meant that a generation of Sinhala songs were, underneath, somebody else's tunes. Shelton Premaratne spent his working life making it unnecessary.",[21,22,24],"h2",{"id":23},"the-habit-he-set-out-to-break","The habit he set out to break",[12,26,27],{},"He was born in 1931 in Ceylon. Almost nothing of his childhood is on the public record — no school, no village, no first teacher — which is a common fate for the arrangers and music directors of this period, whose names sit in small type under the singers'.",[12,29,30],{},"What every account of him agrees on is the shape of the problem he walked into. Sinhala popular song in the 1950s was in thrall to Indian film music. The obituaries published when he died put it plainly: at a time when Sinhala music was loosely imitating tunes from Hindi and Tamil cinema, Premaratne was a pioneer of a music that was original and specific to Sri Lanka. He was fluent on a range of both Eastern and Western instruments, which mattered enormously in a studio culture where the music director had to be able to hear a whole ensemble in his head and write it down for players who read different notations.",[21,32,34],{"id":33},"radio-and-the-sarala-gee-generation","Radio and the sarala gee generation",[12,36,37,38,41,42,46,47,46,50,46,53,46,56,59,60,63],{},"The Sinhala radio song — ",[16,39,40],{},"sarala gee",", \"light song\" — was invented in the 1950s by a small group of staff musicians, lyricists and singers at Radio Ceylon, and it needed arrangers as much as it needed voices. Premaratne became one of the busiest of them. The catalogue of singers he wrote for reads like a roll-call of the century: ",[43,44,45],"strong",{},"Rukmani Devi",", ",[43,48,49],{},"W. D. Amaradeva",[43,51,52],{},"Latha Walpola",[43,54,55],{},"Sunil Santha",[43,57,58],{},"Nanda Malini"," and ",[43,61,62],{},"Victor Ratnayake"," all sang his melodies. A large share of what Sri Lankans now hear as the classic radio repertoire — including a great deal of the early work of Amaradeva and of Nanda Malini — passed through his hands as composer, arranger or music director.",[12,65,66,67,70,71,74,75,70,78,81,82,70,85,88],{},"Individual credits from this period are hard to pin down, because radio songs of the 1950s and 1960s were often broadcast without a printed credit and were re-recorded later under other names. Among the songs that carry his name as composer are ",[43,68,69],{},"සුපුන් සඳක් නැගීලා"," ",[16,72,73],{},"Supun Sandak Nageela"," (\"a full moon has risen\"), sung by Milton Perera to a lyric by Sri Nihal A. Jayasinghe; ",[43,76,77],{},"සඳ මඬලේ සිට",[16,79,80],{},"Sanda Madale Sita"," (\"from the disc of the moon\"), sung by Malani Bulathsinhala; and ",[43,83,84],{},"මාමිණි මාමිණි මා දෙයියා",[16,86,87],{},"Mamini Mamini Ma Deyya",", sung by Wimal J. Sagara.",[21,90,92],{"id":91},"twenty-one-films","Twenty-one films",[12,94,95,96,99,100,103,104,107,108,111,112,115,116,119,120,59,123,126,127,130,131,59,134,137,138,59,141,144],{},"His film career began in 1958 with Sirisena Wimalaweera's ",[16,97,98],{},"Ekamath Eka Rataka"," — \"once upon a country\" — and Wimalaweera used him again for ",[16,101,102],{},"Ma Alaya Kala Tharuniya"," (1959) and ",[16,105,106],{},"Vanamala"," (1960). The rest of the filmography moves through the whole range of what Sinhala cinema was doing at the time: ",[16,109,110],{},"Gehanu Geta"," (1959), ",[16,113,114],{},"Daskon"," (1962), ",[16,117,118],{},"Sihina Hathak"," (1966), the comedies ",[16,121,122],{},"Baduth Ekka Horu",[16,124,125],{},"Pick Pocket"," (both 1969), G. D. L. Perera's ",[16,128,129],{},"Romeo Juliet Kathawak"," (1969), ",[16,132,133],{},"Kalana Mithuro",[16,135,136],{},"Ma Hene Reeri Yaka"," (1971), ",[16,139,140],{},"Hithaka Pipunu Mal",[16,142,143],{},"Veeduru Geval"," (1972).",[12,146,147,148,151],{},"Sources differ on the total. The obituaries and the films.lk biography both credit him with \"at least twenty-one\" Sinhala films; the filmography actually listed on films.lk runs to thirteen, and English Wikipedia's discography adds ",[16,149,150],{},"Hangi Hora"," (1968) to that. The gap is normal for this period — early Sinhala film credits are patchy, and a music director who also arranged for other people's scores often went unlisted.",[21,153,155],{"id":154},"hunuwataye-kathawa-and-the-stage","Hunuwataye Kathawa and the stage",[12,157,158,159,70,162,165,166,169,170,70,173,176],{},"His other body of work was in the theatre, and it is probably the more influential half. He was music composer and director for more than thirty stage productions, the most famous of them ",[43,160,161],{},"Henry Jayasena's",[16,163,164],{},"Hunuwataye Kathawa"," (1967), the Sinhala version of Brecht's ",[16,167,168],{},"The Caucasian Chalk Circle",". It is one of the landmark productions of modern Sinhala theatre, and its songs left the playhouse and became public property — ",[43,171,172],{},"යුද්දෙට මං ගියා",[16,174,175],{},"Yuddeta Man Giya"," (\"I went off to the war\"), with Jayasena's words, is still sung by people who have never seen the play.",[12,178,179],{},"Writing for the stage is a different discipline from writing for radio or film: the music has to carry over a live hall without amplification, it has to be singable by actors rather than trained vocalists, and it has to serve a text. Premaratne's stage work is one of the reasons Sinhala theatre music of the 1960s and 1970s sounds like itself rather than like a film soundtrack.",[21,181,183],{"id":182},"a-teacher-and-a-long-ending","A teacher, and a long ending",[12,185,186],{},"Alongside all of this he taught. Both the Sri Lankan press and his films.lk profile stress the mentoring — a career spanning six decades in which he trained musicians who went on to careers of their own. Sri Lankan writing about him almost always gives him the title of doctor, though no source found says when or by whom the degree was conferred.",[12,188,189,190,193],{},"He spent his last years in Sydney, Australia, living with his son, and died there on 30 May 2024. The news reached Sri Lanka through a Facebook post by the singer and composer ",[43,191,192],{},"Keerthi Pasquel",", and was carried by Ada Derana, the Daily Mirror and The Morning the same day. Those reports gave his age as ninety-four, which does not quite square with the 1931 birth year recorded on the same pages; one of the two figures is wrong, and no source resolves it.",[21,195,197],{"id":196},"not-the-other-shelton","Not the other Shelton",[12,199,200,201,204],{},"He should not be confused with ",[43,202,203],{},"Shelton Perera"," (1939–1986), the Bhatkhande-trained tabla player from a Tower Hall family who became a film composer and, late in life, a Sarasaviya-winning singer. The two overlapped in the studios for twenty years and are routinely mixed up — including in Sri Lankan song databases, where a Premaratne composition sometimes turns up filed under Perera. The rule of thumb: the stage plays and the sarala gee canon are Premaratne's; the tabla and the classical singing are Perera's.",{"title":206,"searchDepth":207,"depth":207,"links":208},"",2,[209,210,211,212,213,214],{"id":23,"depth":207,"text":24},{"id":33,"depth":207,"text":34},{"id":91,"depth":207,"text":92},{"id":154,"depth":207,"text":155},{"id":182,"depth":207,"text":183},{"id":196,"depth":207,"text":197},"1931","The composer who set out to stop Sinhala songwriters borrowing Hindi tunes: music director for twenty-one films and more than thirty stage plays, including Henry Jayasena's Hunuwataye Kathawa.","30 May 2024","1950s-2000s","md","\u002Fimages\u002Fpeople\u002Fshelton-premaratne.webp","films.lk","Unverified — fallback source","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.films.lk\u002Fsinhala-cinema-artist-shelton-premaratne-8022.html",{},true,"\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fshelton-premaratne",[228,229,230],"Composer","Music Director","Musician",{"title":5,"description":216},[233,236,238,241,244],{"title":234,"url":235},"Shelton Premaratne — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FShelton_Premaratne",{"title":237,"url":223},"Shelton Premaratne — films.lk, Digital Identity of Sinhala Cinema",{"title":239,"url":240},"Veteran Sri Lankan musician Shelton Premaratne passes away — Ada Derana, 30 May 2024","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.adaderana.lk\u002Fnews.php?nid=99536",{"title":242,"url":243},"Shelton Premaratne passes away — Daily Mirror, 30 May 2024","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.dailymirror.lk\u002Fbreaking-news\u002FShelton-Premaratne-passes-away\u002F108-283701",{"title":245,"url":246},"Garrett Field, Modernizing Composition: Sinhala Song, Poetry, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Sri Lanka (UC Press, 2017) — on vacana danava","https:\u002F\u002Farchive.org\u002Fdetails\u002Fdli.doa.211","en\u002Fpeople\u002Fshelton-premaratne","1J6a46N2Bk4TkbeB3rI8e0o2XrlmkbacNumalhJkl9c",1787999333580]