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| Sunday, 23 January 2005 |
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Birthday tribute to maestro Premasiri Khemadasa by Sunanda Mahendra
'About thirty five years ago I created a symphony titled the Sea [muhuda] wherein I attempted the musical expressions of the various nuances of the sea, her smoothnesses roughnesses crests and troughs the uses and the abuses as I knew it from my birthright living in a coastal village as a child. But I must tell you that this musical expression without words was an expression of the struggle not only of the people connected with the sea but also with the musicians involved, as well. We have to leave off the narrow attitudes we possess on the local musical culture which may not be the real tradition but a sort of a conventional imitative attitude for which we need better imaginative vibrant creators and just not a parroting of others who lived prior to them or those who left a legacy of just a thin layer of creativity. It is our function as modern musicians to interpret in the best possible manner the sensitive areas of music with a sound understanding of musicology, which is not taught properly. I have struggled all my life in the way I understood music blending all musical cultures to suit my mode of expression and as such I am a musician who is influenced from various forms and just not one or two narrow paths and by paths...' these are some of the repetitive utterances of the well-known music composer and creator Premasiri Khemadasa who holds a concert annually in the month of January to mark and coincide with his birthday which falls on the twenty sixth. In his own way he has the habit of introducing his own creative works to his well wishers and music lovers in common both instrumental and vocal. As we understand, maestro Khemadasa is a self made artiste who has gained inspiration from a few teachers and come a long way experimenting on his own in order to achieve the present state of his calibre as a composer and a teacher of music with special emphasis on the voice training. Over a period of at least five decades he has come a long way in the field of film and theatre ballet and symphony. In each of these fields he has made an indelible mark of his own which I think is discernible. The man in Khemadasa is quite stern and steady though he is given to sicknesses nowadays. In his long journey to the present calibre he has toiled hard trying to understand the essence of various music cultures by way of travelling, listening and experimenting on his own especially during the early hours of the morning. I have my own experience as a theatre director entrusting him the musical score in the Kelaniya University production of Aesop, an experiment in creative communication on Aesopian parables freely interpreted on the stage in order to give modern meanings and ideologies. Maestro Khemadasa to my observation had one of the most energetic tasks to perform on words and verbal patterns musically with vocal and musical fusions, as suited to the theatrical situations in the text. This was one moment where I understood the actual meaning of the term musical interpretation of a play text. At certain moments in his interpretation he takes the choreography quite seriously and makes better amendments to suit the director. This I have observed in several play productions such as Sugathapala De Silva' s 'Marat Sade' and Ranjit Dharmakirti's 'Angaraganga' and many other works. He would go to the extent of helping the play director to make his function far more interpretative than the manner he expected earlier. The late professor Ediriwira Sarachchandra once made use of his interpretative skills in one of his short plays 'Mahasara' about which he feels that maestro Khemadasa had elevated the meanings in the text farther than he expected. This factor of the creative use of music in its variant forms were observable in his own productions of musicals and ballets like 'Manasa Vila' and 'Doramandalava'. The crux of the matter was the elevation of the textual matter into a musical interpretation sustaining the spectator's interest. This was also observed in various Sinhala films like 'Bambaru Avit', 'Goluhadavata', 'Tunveniyamaya' and 'Sirimadura'. On interpreting the subtleties of lyrics creator Khemadasa sees the inner meanings as against the superficialities giving new meanings to words and verbal patterns. In two of his radio and television chat programmes titled 'Parikalpana' and 'Sara Sabamada Telegi Nimavum' respectively, he emphasized the need to know the strengths of each medium in order to build a better musical tradition in the country. He explained over and over again the strength utilized for the sound medium over the years may not suit in the same manner when making use of a visual medium like television, and as such the musician should in his opinion be geared to the modern use of each media knowing the similarities and dissimilarities in order to avoid the stupidities and pitfalls as performers. This is one area which is studied with meticulous care by him for some time. He also said that the singer with the microphone in hand may sing the best song he or she had sung for the sound medium but the impact on the visual medium is quite different. In order to help the spectator get a better view of what he is trying to explain he designed and got some of his pupils to sing and perform some of his own examples. He had done the same thing with some of the film sequences. "The new trends in performing arts may not be reckoned as alien to us for we had the practicing concept in our society as adhered to by the folk ritual like the kankariya and other forms of folk performances. As such one must not merely borrow from the West all that is thrown and thrust on us as popular culture. We should trace this cultural aspects as sensitively as possible and explore the possibilities for the modern day usage," he says "but these areas are not clearly understood neither by the modern day singer cum performer musician nor by the dancer in the fullest sense of the term." In this direction he looks more an orientalist than a borrower and a follower of the modern day foreign popular cultural aspects in mass media. All in all, the contribution of Maestro Premasiri Khemadasa won him the coveted honourary doctorate [D.Litt] from the University of Ruhuna and the master known so far became a doctor. Our good friend the lyric writer Lucien Bulathsinhala has not only written some of the finest lyrics to him but also has written a book illustrating the various struggles in his creative journey over the years. As long as we sense, hear and see the nature of creativity of Dr. Khemadasa, so long will he live amidst us. Sukhi Dighayukho Bhava May you live long. |
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