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Composer Harsha Makalande talks to Tony Donaldson of how his music captures global trends in a Sri Lankan soundscape
On a high note

It is good to be a musician in Sri Lanka today. But it wasn't always so. When I started professionally in music in 1976 only accountants, doctors and lawyers were considered to be educated. A musician was hardly considered educated and it brought little respectability.

Thirty years ago, only Western popular artistes, Western dance bands, and the Oriental radio and film artistes existed in Sri Lanka. But today you find Sinhala pop groups as well. In the 1970s, and even earlier, musicians were concerned about the security of the profession. But when we started playing in pop bands we were actually earning more than some professionals, and this started creating a different image of being a musician in this country. Being a musician has gradually become a more respected and accepted profession in Sri Lanka, and well-known artistes do make a good living.

Being a composer
I started to compose music because I wanted to enrich our serious music repertoire. There are no university courses in Sri Lanka for learning music composition. We have to learn it and do it our own way. Lalanath de Silva and I like to keep our ears open to what is happening in the world. We listen to Western music and other traditions. We try to keep in touch with artists overseas and try to interact with them.

I perform and teach music as well. It has not yet reached a point where music commissions are available in Sri Lanka. There are good opportunities for composing film music, which I have enjoyed, but one cannot survive just on writing film music. As a composer, particularly when I am drawing on traditional Sinhala music, the approach I follow in writing music is that I try not to copy an exact drum pattern or an exact melodic line. I prefer to be influenced by the various styles and sounds of Sri Lanka, but then create something fresh and new. It may remind you of a particular style, but it is actually my own.

Svarasanga Vannama
In my orchestral work Svarasanga Vannama most of the melodies are freshly composed, except for the popular päl kavi tune (traditionally sung when a farmer is keeping watch on his fields or plot) found in the solo piano section titled 'A farmer keeping watch overnight'.

The string section play a Sri Pada theme which was inspired by the mode that forms the Ukussa Vannama (ode to the eagle). The melodic material may not remind you of the Ukussa Vannama. Only the notes have been taken to weave the new theme. The harmonic structure was spiritually inspired by Richard Strauss's Rosen Cavalier, though an analysis of his music and my theme will not reveal anything. The similarities between the two are in the departure from the rules of counterpoint and four-part harmony, and the introduction of 'strange' intervals in a cascading sequence. In my music, a bareness has been adhered to with respect to the text of the harmony, which is in keeping with the eastern concept of minimalism.

The drum rhythms are newly composed as well. The piano solo highlights many of the different 'feels' of drumming found in the up country, Sabaragmuwa, and low country music styles of the island.

Svarasanga Vannama received its premier performance in Colombo on May 29, 1992 by the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka under the baton of Earle de Fonseka. The work features the piano and the geta bera, and Ramya de Livera Perera and Ravi Bandu played these two instruments respectively.

Ramya and Ravi come from very different backgrounds. Ramya comes from a Western piano tradition, while Ravi comes from a traditional background. Bringing these two musicians together brings out a lot of things about contemporary music developments in Sri Lanka. Ravi can read music notation and both he and Ramya understood what it meant to blend the piano and the geta bera together. This understanding develops with each new performance. I find that each time Ravi and Ramya perform Svarasanga Vannama they are able to bring out more features of the music. For instance, I could produce a note that I could not write down in conventional notation for the drum. But the way Ravi creates different harmonics by the way his hands hit the drum face, he is able to create sounds that blend with the piano. It has actually become a tradition that now belongs to this composition.

The piano has a percussive quality to it. I really like the way the piano is played in Latin America. It has influenced me because I play jazz and I began to like the Latin American piano style and was influenced by it. I then realised that Sinhala drum music and our drummers have a really aggressive style, which is totally absent in Sinhala pop music. I wanted to bring out this quality and style to show that it is a part of our environment. Because I am a pianist, and as I was writing Svarasanga Vannama as a major work for piano, I decided to introduce this aggressive style through the piano too.

Colombo audience
It is worthwhile to compare the audience reactions to Svarasanga Vannama when it was first performed in 1992 and later in 1997. The Western-educated audiences said that the different sections of the composition were not properly linked. I perfectly understand this perspective because the form of the piece is in what I call 'Perahera form'. This form brings out the spirit or formation of a Perahera, in which you find seemingly disjointed sections, but a local person can perceive a link, though perhaps subconsciously. He or she knows when the Perahera begins and when it is half way through. So the form of Svarasanga Vannama takes on the spirit of a Perahera.

There is a fast-slow tension in the piece as well, but more than this, the thematic material is seemingly not cohesive, but subtle elements are spread throughout the composition that links it together.

The Oriental-educated audience did not comment on whether the piece was disjointed, or whether the thematic material was linked together. This idea never occurred to them. They were only concerned about the traditional drum techniques. They said the drumming techniques were not brought out enough. This view is also understandable because a traditional Sinhalese drummer usually performs very aggressively.

The second time Svarasanga Vannama was performed in 1997 I found that these comments were much less. The audience understood that the first violins were not there to play a violin concerto, the oboist was not there to play an oboe concerto, and that the geta bera player was not required to play a Magul bera solo!

I feel I have come close to having a Sri Lankan sound in my work. I said earlier that I used a päl kavi in Svarasanga Vannama. But in a section titled 'Pilgrimage to Madu' I drew on other styles such as pasam gee, which is from a church style of music found around Negombo. There is also a Tamil influence in the piece which is derived from a style of music found at the Kataragama festivals called kavadi. This was intentional.

The same elements are to be found at the 'Big Matches'. The trumpet bands that perform at cricket matches in Colombo spill out similar rhythms blended with baila elements. Both the baila and kavadi have six beats per bar, and I drew on these two styles in a section titled 'Elephants at work and play'. All of these music styles are found in Sri Lanka and I like to blend them together.

Globalisation of music
In 1997 I gave a jazz piano recital at the Colombo Cricket Club. Neville Turner, who lives in Melbourne, reviewed this concert for an Australian magazine called Jazzline. In his review, Neville described my music as 'indigenous Sri Lankan jazz'.

In my jazz recitals my aim has been to bring out this subtle Sri Lankan element, and to draw it into the idiom of jazz. Jazz is a global music as it can absorb almost any music into it. I decided I should bring in folk elements that I have heard at various rituals and folk performances in Sri Lanka.

Globalisation can impact on our music and lives in Sri Lanka. Perhaps in a hundred years, nation states as they are defined today may cease to exist and become just names in our history. In this context an artist only becomes nationalistic to a certain point, perhaps only to respect and to pay homage to his or her birthplace.

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