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| Sunday, 15 January 2006 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Voice of
Lanka now on web
by Rikaza Hassan The Sri Lankan communities in the populated cities of Australia are a close knit one. They are helpful to one another and often tend to get together for little chats about back home- discussing their old stories and anecdotes, the current politics and of course the good old music that they so very much miss.
"My wife and I are the only two announcers. We broadcast to a region of Melbourne every Sunday between eight and eleven p.m." says Ranjith Wickramasinghe who was in Sri Lanka for a short holiday recently. With Voice of Lanka going on the web, however, it is not just the residents of southeastern Melbourne but anyone with an internet connection is presented with the opportunity to listen to the Wickramasinghes. The web address is www.3ser.org.au and is broadcast at half past four in the evening, local time. Voice of Lanka boasted around 35,000 listeners but with it going on the net, Sri Lankans from all over the world are able to listen into the program. "Last week I got a caller from Middle East, for instance," says Ranjith about his fans around the world. They also have listeners of other nationalities from Germans to South Africans and Mauritians. "They love the rhythm of our Sri Lankan music." The Voice of Lanka program plays Sri Lankan music from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. "We have to cater to all age groups, so we play a bit of Clarence, a bit of Iraj or Bathiya and Santhush, a bit of the Gypsies and so on." Attracting Sri Lankans of all age groups with their combination of all types of music of all eras, they also broadcast both live and pre-recorded interviews with local artistes. "We do not read out the news as such in our program, but we do give our audiences little tips and make announcements on music, cookery, beauty, ayurveda, etc." And what made Ranjith Wickramasinghe, whose first job in Australia was at the Nissan Manufacturing Plant, want to run his own radio programme? "I used to do recordings in Australian radio stations as a hobby. And all the other ethnicities in Australia had their own ethnic radio, so I thought I'll start a programme for us Sri Lankans as well." He had already possessed a large collection of local music before the idea of hosting a radio show hit him. To further extend his collection he, "bought an entire cassette shop in Sri Lanka once." Times have changed and these days Ranjith simply gets the cds from Sony or gets it down from Sri Lanka. Hosting a radio station however has not always been easy for the husband and wife duo. "We spend our entire Sundays working on the program. We don't even have time to go to church." As children, his two grown-up sons had problems with them spending the entire Sunday away from them. "They used to not like us locked up in our studio all day. And then when we have someone over for an interview, they used to be pretty much inconvenienced. Nowadays of course they have both found their passion in life in music. Rukshan and Rumesh play bass guitar and keyboards for a local band called helashakthi," says Ranjith. Ranjith believes that his radio program has served its purpose in that it has brought the Sri Lankan community even closer. "We take these people back to Sri Lanka for three hours every week and I think that it makes them feel much closer." "I think that our broadcast is about 90% on par with the local stations. Even with the little time that I and Ruby have, we still deliver a product of quality." In 2005, Ruby Wickramasinghe was awarded the title of 'Best Female Australian Announcer'. Ranjith also prefers the Sri Lankan stations over the Australian ones. "Here they censor the music, but over there they play everything. I maybe old fashioned but that's my opinion," he says. He is currently looking into offers to join up with local stations in his presentation of Voice of Lanka. "I also want to develop my programme by adding more entertaining tit bits to it." Ranjith and Ruby Wickramasinghe are proud of their achievements, of serving the Lankan community of Australia for more than a decade. They are prouder still and feel a sense of security with the knowledge that their sons will continue in their footsteps and continue to take the local community in Australia and the world back to Sri Lanka, live. |
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| Produced by Lake House |
Fourteen-years-ago, in an attempt to give the Lankans residing in the
land of kangaroos and koala bears a taste of home, Ranjith Wickramasinghe
began the radio broadcast "Voice of Lanka". Together with his wife Ruby,
Ranjith hosts on 3SER (Melbourne South Eastern Radio) a three hour program,
live on Sunday nights. 
