email from Piyusha Atapattu
I like to
share this beautiful message concerning the origin of an old song - Dura Penena
Thanithala. If you remember, this was a very popular song in early 1950s. Some
of us may even have sung it in school.
If you
open the two links below - In the first link you will be able to listen to the
original song sung by Vivien de Silva Boralessa and Kanthi Wakwella. The
second link will give you access to the newer version of the same song sung by
Nanda Malini and TM Jayaratne. It will take about 3.5 minutes each to listen to
the two versions of the song.
The story
of the song given below is very interesting.........
www.youtube.com/watch?v=
www.youtube.com/watch?v=
In 1947
before some of us were born Karunaratne Abeysekara, Sarath Wimalaweera and BS
Perera the musician were travelling in a car to Anuradhapura for some official
function of Radio Ceylon.
Both KA
and SW were famous lyricists at the time. SW suggested to KA to write a
song on Anuradhapura which went unnoticed hence SW himself wrote a song. SW
passed it onto BSP who took it home and composed music for the lyrics. A friend
of BSP helped him to compose the song and that friend was Vivien de Silva
Boralessa's father. The three of them decided that VdeSB herself would sing the
song along with Kanthi Wakwella a young male singer at the time. That was the
origin of that beautiful song Dura Penena Thanithala.....Vivien de Silva
Boralessa and Kanthi Wakwella first sang this in 1948 live for a Sarala Gee
programme conducted by Radio Ceylon.
This was
a watershed moment in Sinhala music. Until then Sinhala musicians followed
Uttara Bharathiya Ragadhari music in composing Sinhala songs but this is the
first time Western music was introduced to a Sinhala song by a musician ie BS
Perera. He introduced waltz type of ballroom music to this song which became
extremely popular even amongst the villagers. This was mainly because the
lyrics carried a Buddhist theme.Â
Dura
Penena Thanithala.... was first recorded under HMV label in 1950. It took 3 days
for the song to be recorded. There was only one microphone for both the
singers and the orchestra. Recording was done under a shed coverd with
corrugated sheet on the roof. When they started to record the song heavy
rain came down and with the noice of rain drops falling on corrugated sheet
recording was impossible. Rain continued for 2 more days but both days the
orchestra and the singers assembled under the shed with no respite. Finally the
recording was done when the rain stopped. When the song went on sale it went
like UNUKEVUM they say. HMV gave VdeSB some Rs 600 and a radiogramme as a
present.Â
Last year
she was interviewed by ITN and she sang this song along with one of her sons.
She was 87yrs then.
The new
version of the song is sung by Nanda Malini and TM Jayaratne.
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