[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":290},["ShallowReactive",2],{"story-en-teledrama-theme-songs":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"category":249,"description":250,"era":251,"extension":252,"featured":253,"heroImage":254,"imageCredit":255,"imageLicense":256,"imageSource":257,"meta":258,"navigation":259,"path":260,"rawYear":261,"seo":262,"sources":263,"stem":287,"translated":259,"url":288,"__hash__":289},"storiesEn\u002Fen\u002Fstories\u002Fteledrama-theme-songs.md","How the Teledrama Theme Became Its Own Art Form",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":240},"minimark",[9,18,21,26,33,42,46,57,60,66,70,73,116,140,170,174,177,214,217,221,234],[10,11,12,13,17],"p",{},"Television arrived in Sri Lanka in April 1979 as a private venture, was nationalised inside two months, and by February 1982 had a second, state-built channel that could transmit in colour. Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation adopted the European PAL 625B standard and became, on the ",[14,15,16],"em",{},"Sunday Observer","'s account, the first colour television station in South Asia — popular enough across the Palk Strait that South Indians watched it, because South India did not yet have colour of its own.",[10,19,20],{},"That is the hardware. The interesting part is what the country immediately did with it. Within a decade the two-minute song at the front of a weekly serial had become one of the most important places a new Sinhala song could be born — and composers who wrote symphonies and film scores were queueing up to write them.",[22,23,25],"h2",{"id":24},"a-first-that-nobody-can-date","A first that nobody can date",[10,27,28,29,32],{},"The programme normally called the country's first teledrama is ",[14,30,31],{},"Dimuthu Muthu",", directed by D. B. Nihalsinghe and starring Devika Mihirani and Amarasiri Kalansuriya, a story built around a village girl called Nanda and the durability of traditional village values.",[10,34,35,36,38,39,41],{},"Its date and its channel are genuinely disputed, and this article will not pick one. Nihalsinghe left the State Film Corporation in 1979 to found Tele-Cine Limited, and the accounts that follow his own career describe it as pioneering professional colour television production in South Asia in 1979 — which would put the serial on ITN. Roar Media's survey of Sri Lankan teledramas says flatly that it aired on Rupavahini in 1982, and the ",[14,37,16],{},"'s Rupavahini anniversary piece agrees that \"",[14,40,31],{}," was the first local teledrama shown on Rupavahini.\" Both cannot be right about the first broadcast, and no source consulted here reconciles them. What is not in dispute is the claim that made it famous: it was South Asia's first teledrama in colour.",[22,43,45],{"id":44},"the-serial-about-the-open-economy","The serial about the open economy",[10,47,48,49,52,53,56],{},"The one that established what the form was ",[14,50,51],{},"for"," came next. ",[14,54,55],{},"Palingu Menike"," — \"the crystal maiden\" — was the first production of the newly formed Teledrama Division of the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation, directed by Dhamma Jagoda from a script by Somaweera Senanayake, written in 1984 and telecast in 1985. Eighteen episodes. Rohana Beddage played a traditional dancer in a southern village; Sriyantha Mendis played Surasena, a man who comes back to that village having made money in the city.",[10,58,59],{},"Senanayake said afterwards what the serial was actually about: how the open economy was corroding the traditional values of rural society. That is a direct reference to the liberalisation of 1977, the same rupture that had just created a mass cassette market and broken the state broadcaster's monopoly on what a Sri Lankan could listen to. Television, cassettes and the open economy arrived together, and the first serious teledrama was about the last of the three.",[10,61,62,63,65],{},"It worked, and it kept working. By 2018 ",[14,64,55],{}," had been re-telecast ten times in thirty-three years.",[22,67,69],{"id":68},"why-composers-took-it-seriously","Why composers took it seriously",[10,71,72],{},"Consider the arithmetic from a composer's side. A film song reaches whoever buys a ticket, once. A cassette reaches whoever buys the cassette. A teledrama theme reaches every household with a television set, at the same hour, every week, for the entire run of the serial — and then again on every re-telecast. It is repetition on a scale no other Sinhala musical form had ever been offered, and it cost the producer a fraction of a film score.",[10,74,75,76,79,80,83,84,87,88,87,91,94,95,98,99,87,102,87,105,108,109,112,113,115],{},"Premasiri Khemadasa understood this immediately. His long collaboration with the director Jayantha Chandrasiri produced the music for ",[14,77,78],{},"Dandubasnamanaya"," — \"an arrow's range,\" the country's first action-thriller serial, built on the martial art of ",[14,81,82],{},"angampora"," — and the themes from it are still among the most recognisable pieces of music made in Sri Lanka. He went on to ",[14,85,86],{},"Weda Hamine",", ",[14,89,90],{},"Akala Sandhya",[14,92,93],{},"Sathara Denek Senpathiyo"," and ",[14,96,97],{},"Golu Hadawatha",", and scored Dharmasena Pathiraja's television work — ",[14,100,101],{},"Gangulen Egodata",[14,103,104],{},"Ella Langa Walawwa",[14,106,107],{},"Pura Sakmana"," — as well as Bandula Vithanage's ",[14,110,111],{},"Asalwesiyo",". When ",[14,114,78],{}," took eleven prizes at the first Sumathi Tele Awards in 1995, including best teledrama, it confirmed that television drama was now something with its own standards to meet.",[10,117,118,119,122,123,127,128,131,132,135,136,139],{},"Clarence Wijewardena came at it from the opposite end of the musical spectrum — the man who had put the electric guitar into Sinhala pop — and treated the form just as seriously. For the serial ",[14,120,121],{},"Susima"," he wrote and directed the music for all six of its songs, among them ",[124,125,126],"strong",{},"දෑස පියාගත් කල"," ",[14,129,130],{},"Desa Piyagath Kala",", sung by Jackson Anthony and George Senanayake. For ",[14,133,134],{},"Nidikumba Mal",", directed by Sydney Chandrasekara, he composed ",[14,137,138],{},"Sasara Gewa Yana"," and got W. D. Amaradeva to sing it: the pioneer of Sinhala guitar pop writing for the towering figure of the classical tradition, on television, for a weekly serial. Nothing else in the culture was arranging collaborations like that.",[10,141,142,143,94,146,149,150,87,153,87,156,87,159,94,162,165,166,169],{},"Rohana Weerasinghe became the composer television reached for by default, from ",[14,144,145],{},"Rekha",[14,147,148],{},"Sudu saha Kalu"," in the early 1980s through ",[14,151,152],{},"Dunhinda Addara",[14,154,155],{},"Sankranthi Samaya",[14,157,158],{},"Vilambeetha",[14,160,161],{},"Gajaman Nona",[14,163,164],{},"Rala Bindena Thena",", collecting SIGNIS, Sumathi and Raigam awards for them between 1992 and 2008. He also scored ",[14,167,168],{},"Doo Daruwo",", the first \"mega\" serial, which ran from 1990 to 1995 across 230 episodes.",[22,171,173],{"id":172},"what-the-form-settled-into","What the form settled into",[10,175,176],{},"By the 1990s the teledrama theme had hardened into something with recognisable habits, though no study has formalised them: short, stating a mood rather than a plot, usually one voice over a small ensemble, and written to survive being heard several hundred times without becoming unbearable — a constraint no film song has to meet.",[10,178,179,180,183,184,187,188,87,191,87,194,87,197,87,200,87,203,87,206,209,210,213],{},"It also became a career in itself. Nirosha Virajini has sung a great many of them, including the themes for ",[14,181,182],{},"Oba Nisa","; Deepika Priyadarshani Peiris took a Sumathi Award in 2017 for the theme of ",[14,185,186],{},"Maada Obama Viya","; lyricists such as Dharmarathna Perera wrote for serial after serial — ",[14,189,190],{},"Wathusudu Mal",[14,192,193],{},"Gimanata Pawana",[14,195,196],{},"Wanapasa Mal",[14,198,199],{},"Pabasara",[14,201,202],{},"Samudra Chaya",[14,204,205],{},"Kon Kala Doni",[14,207,208],{},"Haratha Hera"," — and the singer Chandana Welikala is credited with the theme of ",[14,211,212],{},"Kopi Kade",", the comedy serial that began on 1 April 1987 and was still running past its two-thousandth uninterrupted weekly episode in October 2024.",[10,215,216],{},"The clearest sign that it had become a form rather than a piece of branding is what happened to the songs afterwards. A theme tune identifies a programme and normally stops there. In Sinhala the theme regularly detached from its serial and went on being requested, covered and sung at concerts, so that the tune outlived the story it was written for — which is a fair definition of an art form finding its own legs.",[22,218,220],{"id":219},"what-we-know-and-how-we-know-it","What we know, and how we know it",[10,222,223,224,226,227,229,230,233],{},"The production credits, dates and Somaweera Senanayake's account of what ",[14,225,55],{}," was about come from Roar Media's 2018 survey of Sri Lankan teledramas; the Rupavahini technical history, including the PAL standard and the South Asian colour claim, comes from the ",[14,228,16],{},"'s 2017 anniversary feature. The composer credits are drawn from Wikipedia entries on Khemadasa, Clarence Wijewardena and Rohana Weerasinghe, each sourced in turn to ",[14,231,232],{},"Sarasaviya",".",[10,235,236,237,239],{},"The date and channel of ",[14,238,31],{}," are unresolved: 1979 on ITN in the accounts following Nihalsinghe's own career, 1982 on Rupavahini in the television histories, with no reconciliation published. Beyond that, the documentary record for teledrama music is poor. Many well-known themes have no reliable published credit for composer, lyricist or singer at all, and none has been invented here to fill the gap.",{"title":241,"searchDepth":242,"depth":242,"links":243},"",2,[244,245,246,247,248],{"id":24,"depth":242,"text":25},{"id":44,"depth":242,"text":45},{"id":68,"depth":242,"text":69},{"id":172,"depth":242,"text":173},{"id":219,"depth":242,"text":220},"genre","A two-minute tune at the top of a weekly serial turned out to be the cheapest way to put a new Sinhala song into every house in the country — so the best composers went and wrote them.","1980s-2000s","md",false,"\u002Fimages\u002Fstories\u002Fteledrama-theme-songs.webp","Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation (via Roar Media)","Unverified — fallback source","https:\u002F\u002Farchive.roar.media\u002Fenglish\u002Flife\u002Fhistory\u002Fseven-iconic-teledramas-in-sri-lankas-television-history",{},true,"\u002Fen\u002Fstories\u002Fteledrama-theme-songs",1982,{"title":5,"description":250},[264,266,269,272,275,278,281,284],{"title":265,"url":257},"Roel Raymond, 'Seven Iconic Teledramas In Sri Lanka's Television History' — Roar Media, 29 January 2018",{"title":267,"url":268},"Champika Deepani Ranasinghe, 'Rupavahini: 35 years of visual flair' — Sunday Observer, 19 February 2017","https:\u002F\u002Farchives1.sundayobserver.lk\u002F2017\u002F02\u002F19\u002Ffeatures\u002Frupavahini-35-years-visual-flair",{"title":270,"url":271},"D. B. Nihalsinghe — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FD._B._Nihalsinghe",{"title":273,"url":274},"Premasiri Khemadasa — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FPremasiri_Khemadasa",{"title":276,"url":277},"Clarence Wijewardena — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FClarence_Wijewardena",{"title":279,"url":280},"Rohana Weerasinghe — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FRohana_Weerasinghe",{"title":282,"url":283},"Doo Daruwo — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FDoo_Daruwo",{"title":285,"url":286},"Kopi Kade — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FKopi_Kade","en\u002Fstories\u002Fteledrama-theme-songs",null,"4CBpN44jzpKCfcgE4sjn8xtTpEkyMP82C8rTUljkTsE",1787999338203]