He lost. That is the first thing to say about Shihan Mihiranga, and it is the most interesting thing about him: in the first season of Sirasa Superstar in 2006 — the show that changed how Sri Lanka discovered singers — he finished fifth, while being, by common account, the most popular contestant on it. Twenty years later the placings look like a clerical error. The songs he made in the months straight afterwards are still being played.
What he sang on that show tells you where he came from. He worked his way through the Rookantha Gunathilake catalogue: "Suwanda Dena Mal Waney", "Nihanda Mawathey", "Mama Ehewwa Horen", "As-Deka Piyana". Rookantha was the singer who had proved in the 1980s that a Sinhala pop voice could be produced as carefully as a Western one, and Shihan was, in effect, announcing his allegiance.
The show, and what came after it
Sirasa Superstar mattered out of proportion to its format. Until 2006 a Sinhala singer was made in one of two places: the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation's grading panel, which decided who was allowed near a microphone at all, or the cassette-and-band circuit, which decided who could fill a hall. Television now offered a third route, and it did not ask anyone's permission. A generation of singers came through it — and so did the criticism that still follows the format, that it manufactures visibility faster than it manufactures musicians.
Shihan is the counter-example most often reached for, because the visibility was the smaller half of what he brought. He had the songs already.
Kandana
Shihan Mihiranga Bennet was born on 18 March 1985 — sources differ on where, with Colombo given in one place and Weliweriya in another. His father, Tyronne Bennet, was a sound engineer who had worked in Bahrain; his mother is Nilu Mallika, and he has a younger sister, Shanika Mihiravi. He went to De Mazenod College in Kandana, on the coast north of Colombo.
The detail worth pausing on is the father's trade. Shihan is not only a singer: he writes, composes, produces and engineers, and he has done so from the beginning. Growing up around a mixing desk is the simplest explanation for why a twenty-one-year-old reality-show contestant was able to make an album that sounded like a record rather than a demo — and why, two decades on, he is credited as a recording engineer as often as a vocalist.
Dreamz
That album, Dreamz of Shihan, came out in 2006, within months of the competition. He composed every melody and wrote every lyric on it himself — unusual then and unusual now for a singer arriving through television — and it took a most-popular-album award. Its songs are still the core of his live set: ඒ සොඳුරු සමනල් වියේ Aa Sonduru Samanal Viye ("in that lovely butterfly age"), ඇස ගැටෙනා දස දහසක් Asa Getena Dasa, ඔබේ සෙනෙහේ දැවටෙමින් Obe Senehe Dewatemin, and above all අද තනියෙන් මා Ada Thaniyen Ma.
Ada Thaniyen Ma was his first music video and the one that made him a face rather than a voice. It won most popular music video at the Derana Music Video Awards, though the sources are inconsistent about the year — 2007 in one place and 2009 in another — so the award is better remembered without a date attached to it.
The second album, Dreamz 2 – My Life (2008), went the other way: he opened the door to other writers and composers, and the credits fill up with names from the industry he had just joined. Nandana Wickramage wrote several lyrics; Rukshan Mark, Nalin Perera, Theja Iddamalgoda and Rookantha Gunathilake himself supplied melodies. පිණි පොද වැටෙනා Pini Poda Watena, සුළඟක් වෙලා Sulagak Wela and මිහිරාවියේ Mihiraviye come from it.
Playback, remakes and the long tail
Since then his output has been the pattern of a working Sri Lankan pop singer in the streaming era: singles, film songs, teledrama themes, and remakes.
He sang playback for the film Suwanda Danuna Jeewithe — "Perada Mewu Sina", "Ron Suwanda Dena" as a duet with Uresha Ravihari, and "Sith Mal Hegum Popiyana Yame" — and රැය පිබිදී Raya Pibidee for Super Six, to a lyric by Nilar N. Cassim. රෑ තිස්සේ ඇවිල්ලා Ra Thisse Awilla was written for him by Upul Shantha Sannasgala; සඳරේණු වෑහෙනා Sanda Renu Wehena by Lalith Wasantha. හතර කේන්දරේ Hathara Kendare and වස්සානේ Wassane became standards of his own. He joined Kasun Kalhara, Nirosha Virajini and Umaria Sinhawansa on සෙනෙහේ අම්මාගේ Senehe Ammage ("a mother's love"), and sang the Sinhala theme for the dubbed serial Jodha Akbar with Nirosha Virajini. In 2020 he released Oba Magemai, written for weddings, which is its own kind of ambition.
He also became one of the more prolific re-makers of older Sinhala songs — මා දෑසේ වේදනා Ma Dase Wedana and Namal Udugama's "Ra Sihinen" among them. That habit is criticised often enough in Sri Lankan music writing, and it is worth noting what he is actually doing: reintroducing 1970s and 1980s repertoire to an audience that would otherwise never hear it, in the production language that audience already listens in.
On the other side of the desk
By the fourth season of Sirasa Superstar, rebranded Generation 4, he was no longer competing on it — he was hosting it, alongside Nirosha Perera, and singing its theme song, "Yawwane Sihina Yata Daelwune". In 2013 he sat on the judging panel for season five. From 2018 he was a judge on Hiru TV's Hiru Star, staying for its first three seasons.
That arc — contestant, host, judge — is now the standard career shape in Sri Lankan popular music, and Shihan was among the first to complete it. He has also done the commercial work that goes with television visibility, appearing as a brand ambassador for Mobitel and for a Ceylon Biscuits product.
He remains, at heart, a self-contained operation: the man who writes the song, sings it, produces it and mixes it. In an industry where those four jobs usually belong to four people who argue, the fifth-place finisher turned out to be the one who did not need the other three.