The Sunil Santha Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Tony Donaldson at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute on December 14. The lecture titled ‘Sunil Santha: The Man who invented Sinhala Music for a Modern Age’ will be translated into Sinhala by Dr. Ruvan Ekanayake.
Tony Donaldson studied music performance and Asian languages at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, from 1983 to 1986. In 1987, he completed a Post-Graduate Diploma in Music Performance and Teaching from the Nelson School of Music studying under the English guitarist John Mills. In 1988, he was awarded an Indonesian Government Scholarship to study gamelan music on the island of Java and after two years there, he returned to New Zealand to complete further degrees in anthropology and ethnomusicology.
In 1995, he completed a Master’s degree (with Distinction) at Victoria University on the music and dance of west Java. On the strength of this success, he was awarded a Monash Graduate Scholarship in 1996 to undertake doctoral research at Monash University, Australia, on the rituals and music in the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, Sri Lanka. It was while carrying out fieldwork in Sri Lanka in 1997 that he first encountered the songs of Sunil Santha. He graduated with a PhD from Monash University in 2003.
On completing a PhD, he joined the Monash Asia Institute and also lectured at RMIT University. From 2008 to 2009, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore to initiate a project on contemporary artists. He has since worked tirelessly throughout Asia and Europe on projects relating to music and the visual arts.
Sunil Santha (14 April 1915 – 11 April 1981) was a renowned and influential Sri Lankan composer, singer and lyricist. He was pivotal in the development of Sinhala music and folk songs in the mid to late 1940s and early 1950s. He composed the beloved soundtracks to Lester James Peries’ Rekava and Sandesaya in 1956 and 1960. In a later comeback, he produced several experimental works. On 2 March 1946 Santha held a recital for the Kumaratunga Commemoration ceremony and was asked to record for Radio Ceylon. Over the next six years, he would have a string of popular songs including “Olu Pipila” (the first song to be recorded at then Radion Ceylon), “Handapane”, “Ho Ga Rella Negay”, “Bowitiya Dan Palukan Vare”, “Suwada Rosa Mal Nela”, “Kokilayange”, and “Mihikathanalawala.” Santha stressed his Sinhala heritage in his songs opting to sing in Sinhala rather than English and not copy Hindustani and Tamil songs of India. A diligent songwriter himself, Santha sang songs written by lyricists like Huberth Dissanayake, Munidasa Cumaratunga, Raipiel Tennakoon, Arisen Ahubudu and Fr. Marcelline Jayakody.