‘Himidiriye’ Singing Doc’s maiden venture
Dr. Suraj Ranasinghe, popularly known as the singing doctor amongst his friends in the UK, is a professional medical practitioner living in Norwich, UK. Apart from his medicinal life, Dr. Ranasinghe is a lover of music and a musician. Recently he has produced his maiden CD comprising 16 Sinhala originals titled ‘Himidiriye’.
‘Himidiriye’ was officially launched at the Ananda Samarakoon multi -studio at the SLBC on 11th December 2017 amids a host of musicians, Suraj’s family and other invitees .
Suraj himself had composed eleven songs for the CD. He was responsible for originating introductions and interludes for all the songs , while Dr. Ajith de Silva - also domiciled in the UK, composed five songs for this ‘Himidiriye’ album. The music scores were written and conducted by music virtuoso Visharadha Dinesh Bogoda who supplemented Suraj’s creations and melodies to produce a classy and melodious musical end product. The repertoire of Suraj’s songs are varied and portray Sinhala folk and art-song traditions, while some of them follow the group songs style of the 70s – a genre of simple music very close to Suraj. In fact, Suraj, now past his mid 50s, first thought of ‘doing something musical’ less than a year back when he penned his maiden song ‘Dayak Damaa’ – a lament of an expat. Very soon, one song led to another – thus igniting the passion to produce the CD. ‘My CD ‘Himidiriye’ became a reality due to a ‘chance’ I encountered with Visharadha Dinesh and the casual chats . I am immensely grateful to him’ Suraj said. Suraj, who learned the rudiments of music under the late Claude Fernando at his music academy in Dehiwala, is self-taught in many ways, having spent time to understand the basics of western harmony singing and north Indian raagadhaari music . His creations contain a combination of a variety of musical traditions.
The songs included in this compilation are ‘Himidiriye’, ‘Mahaweli Ganga’, ‘Punchi Punchi’ (innocence), ‘Kurullene’, ‘Kandukara Siriya’, ‘Aadaraya’, ‘Tham Dena Thana’, Dayak Damaa’, ‘Neela Guwan’, ‘Bo Maluwe’, Kaasi Aththnam’ Mage handa wetha’, ‘Eda Sandawe’, ‘Eatha Kodeuwaka’, Handewae Ulalani’ and Hiru besa yanne’.
The songs were originally arranged by Suraj on a Yamaha Tyros 5 workstation and the tracks sent to Dinesh via mobile phone - using ‘whats app’ for him to write the musical scores. Suraj is full of praise for Visharadha Dinesh for encouraging and spurring him to produce his CD on the basis of mutual friendship in the name of quality music, for absolutely no monetary gain . Some of the best instrumentalists in the country – namely Manoj Peiris (tabla), Mahinda Bandara (guitar), Sarath de Alwis (keyboard), Niresh Perera (drums), Janaka Bogoda (flute) among others provided the musical backup for ‘Himidiriye’.
All proceeds from the CD sales would be channeled to the charity – ‘SMILE’, created and managed by Suraj’s son Lasith, which has been in existence since 2010, providing library books, computers and musical instruments to needy rural schools in different locations in Sri Lanka.
All songs on the CD were well received by the audience at the launch ceremony, with the 70s group songs era musicians Priya Peiris of La Bambas and Melroy Dharmaratne – two of Suraj ‘s close allies sharing some glowing impressions about ‘Himidiriye’. Suraj also runs his own YouTube channel ‘Sulilala’ named after himself, his wife Lilani (also a medical doctor) and the son Lasith.
