Sujatha Attanayake’s trail-blazing career in music

After a long silence, Sujatha Attanayake, singer with the widest tonal range in Sri Lanka, is to make a comeback with her forthcoming concert scheduled for December 17. In this column, I examine Sujatha Attanayake’s trailb-lazing career in music which spans over half a century and over diverse areas of music and traditions of music.

Compared with legendary Indian classical singer, Sujatha Attanayake is the only Sri Lankan singer with a tonal range on par with classical Indian singers such as Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, and Prabha Atre.

Tonal range

In simple terms, tonal range is the singer’s ability to sing notes on all three octaves on the world wide concert C. Concert C is made up of Lower Octave, Middle Octave and Higher Octave.

Sujatha Attanayake can sing up to 8 notes on the Middle Octave on the Concert C. In the same manner, she could sing up to 5-6 notes on the Lower Octave on Concert C and she can sing 6-8 notes on the Higher Octave. This is a unique feature in her voice. Significantly, she can produced notes effortlessly without using the head voice unlike other singers except Neela Wickramasinghe and Rashmi Sangeetha.

Flexibility

Unlike in Western music, in North Indian classical and Carnatic music traditions, there is greater freedom for the performer and the singer. This freedom in performance is particularly manifested in North Indian classical music techniques such as Gamak, Khayal and Dhrupad.

A unique feature of Sujatha’s vocal codes is that she is able to produce intricate microtonal intervals without making any effort. In addition to her innate ability in her vocal codes, she has gained classical training necessary to produce such complex and subtle microtonal intervals which is described in North Indian classical music as Sadhana (Mental and physical training to produce such intricate notes).

Sujatha Attanayake is at home with the diverse styles of singing in North Indian Classical and Carnatic and Western music traditions because of her voice flexibility.

As she is also well versed in those music traditions, she has rendered her voice to a large number of classical and semiclassical performances. Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation has a collection of her songs, classical and semi-classical performances. There are Sinhalese, Hindi and Tamil songs in her collection. She has performed as a super grade singer at the SLBC due to her unique abilities and talents.

A significant feature of her singing is that she sang not only melodiously but also retaining the classical traits of the songs. Her performance is often beautified by her ability to generate zest out of touching on diverse colours and tones of the notes and chords. This ability differs from one singer to another in Hindustani tradition depending on the performer’s knowledge, practice and the properties of voice such as flexibility and tonal range. Ability to be at home with diverse traditions of music is a unique position in Sadhana.

Preserving the intrinsic qualities of the language is another feature of her singing. Each language has its own unique sound patterns which define one language from another. She can sing in different languages without mixing the sound patterns and tonal quality of one language with another in general and in Sinhalese, Hindi and Tamil in particular.

In terms of flexibility, Sujatha Attanayake exploits not only the melody power but also the technicalities and other embellishments of the song.

In essence, her range of voice and flexibility is on par with the tonal ranges of voices of classical Indian singers such as Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Anuradha Powdhval, Prabha Atre, Reeta Ganguly and Kavita Krishnamurthy.

She pronounced Sinhalese worlds perfectly yet with Tamil texture generated by the Carnatic music motifs. Sujatha Attanayake is also unique in her ability to sing in different languages besides Sinhalese. She rendered her voice to 19 Tamil films in addition to singing in languages such as Hindi, Nepali, Gujarati and Islamic songs.

For her Visharad in North Indian Classical Music, Sujatha took up vocal and Sitar, a fact which vindicates her technical knowledge of music not only in singing but also in instrumental music.

Playback singer

Apart from her versatility in North Indian classical music and Carnatic tradition, Sujatha Attanayake is an outstanding playback singer. Her songs had immortalised the films, capturing the imagination of viewers. For instance, the theme song of the film Parasatumal, Paraunua malwala suwanda Atheethe has not only became an all time hit but also become a part of the music legacy of the nation.

Beginning with her first ever playback song which she sang for S.M Nayagam’s film Sohoyuro in 1956, she rendered her voice to over 350 playback songs. She became the first Sri Lankan woman director of music when she directed music for the film Hariyata Hari.

Sujatha Attanayake’s exceptional talents were manifested at the audition conducted by highly reputed Indian academic Prof. Deepali Nagh. She was the only Sri Lankan singer who scored 95 marks at the audition which is the highest marks among Sri Lankan singers participated in the audition.

Victim of gangsterism

Sujatha has rendered her voice to over 352 Sinhalese films and 19 Tamil movies. However, she is also a tragic victim of dirty gangsterism in the field of art which dominated the award committees and prevented her from claiming many an award that was rightfully hers.

In the final analysis, one can come to the conclusion that one’s talents and due place in society cannot be ignored by virtually denying the honours, awards or accolades by dubious means. Ultimately what matters is not the hollowed trophies that signifying nothing but a token of momentary recognition but the lasting value of creations.