Saving the songs of our cinema

Song is an integral part of all cinematic traditions in the East. Whether it be Bollywood, Kollywood or South India or our own Sinhala cinema songs played a key role in promoting films to the audience. There are many instances where filmgoers flocked to the theatres just to hear the film songs they loved.

In a bid to save the songs of the golden era of Sri Lankan cinema, award winning filmmaker, lyricist and writer Prof. Sunil Ariyaratne has released his latest book, a collection of lyrics from films released between 1957 and 1961. The book titled 'Sinhala Cinema Geethawaliya-2' (Lyrics of the Sinhala Cinema) follows his first release under the same title, a collection of lyrics from the first film of Sinhala cinema 'Kadawunu Poronduwa' in 1947 and the film that in 1956 changed the history of Sri Lankan cinema, Lester James Peries' 'Rekhawa'.

"The book was released to coincide with the 61st anniversary of Sinhala cinema and the release's literary value will be more important for the future than for the present," said Prof. Ariyaratne describing his objective in releasing the book. "Our cinema has a special appeal for songs. This is due to the reason that Sri Lankan cinema has been influenced by the Hindi and South Indian Tamil cinema in which songs played a major role. On the other hand, songs played a significant role in our indigenous traditional plays like 'Noorthi' and 'Nadagam'," explained renowned the renowned professor.

In one of the 'Noorthis' made by John de Silva there were over 40 songs. So this influence has continued up to date and even today our filmmakers use songs to attract the audience, he said. Like films, song records, sound tracks and most of the lyrics of songs in the early cinema were not recorded.

"Dr. Lester James Peries emphasised the importance of an archive in 1956. Nearly after fifty years this had not happened and no cinema pictures, equipment, posters, negatives, songs, titles or voice tracks have been preserved," said Prof. Ariyaratne in a sad tone. Except what Tissa Nagodavithana and a few others have preserved there will not be a single Sinhala film from the past.

"However as I am concerned about songs, I decided to make an attempt to preserve the songs in the Sinhala cinema," described Prof. Ariyaratne about his historically important effort. Asked as to what obstacles he faced Prof. Ariyaratne stated that finding the correct lyrics was the most difficult task.

"At the beginning there was a practice to publish a song book with the release of the film. Most of these books were published by different individuals and lyrics coming in these books were incorrect. This may have been done deliberately to avoid any legal issues. And later the practice of publishing the song books ceased and I had to completely depend on gramophones," Prof. Ariyaratne said. He further said that it was also hard to find the original lyricists in the films where there were a large number of songs as their names were not indicated with the particular songs they had penned. Prof. Ariyaratne had to painstakingly go through the newspapers and magazines published during the said period.

'Sinhala Cinema Geethawaliya-2' has added features including complete working titles of each film, studios where they were shot and songs recorded and even the covers of some of the song books published. Prof. Ariyaratne also has paid tribute to the creative musicians who strove to create Sinhala cinema music. This is done by indicating whether the lyrics were written for original Sinhala melodies or Hindi and Tamil copies.

"During this period most of the melodies were copies of Hindi or Tamil film songs. But there were a few path breaking musicians like Sunil Shantha, (Sandeshaya), R. Muttuswamy (Kurulu Bedda), B. S. Perera (Jivitaya), Edwin Samaradivakara (Daskama), Shelton Premaratne (Gahanu Gata) Mohammed Ghouse and N. K. Rocksamy who composed original tunes for cinema," he explained.

"'Sinhala Cinema Geethawaliya-2' will be really valuable for the future generation specially for those who conduct research on Sinhala cinema. I hope to release a book with the lyrics of films released during the past 15 years," said Prof. Ariyaratne with the determination to save Sinhala cinema.