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| Sunday, 12 January 2003 |
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"Oba Magemai" Sri Lanka's first garage track will be the title of Ashanthi de Alwis and Ranidu Lankage's first ever joint ever CD outside the Bhathiya Santhush umbrella, which will be released this week. Featuring a mixture of English and Sinhala songs (plus one instrumental), the 13 songs will have a unique East-West blend, combining distinctively Sri Lankan sounds with R & B, Garage, Dance and Hip Hop. What the two call "Singlish" songs, will have a Western base in its music, while focusing on a Sri Lankan culture. "What we hope is to create a whole new Sri Lankan identity in music while giving it a Western base. The tracks running in this CD have a mixture of slow, fast and club in it. It is mass market music. Not just limited to one set of people" they say. Being their own creative output, Ashanthi will be the driving voice behind the album, while Ranidu will be handling its production and creating the original "Ashanthi & Ranidu" sound. Ashanthi has also written the lyrics of the English songs while Bandula Nanayakkara and Chanake Jayasekara had composed some of the Sinhala lyrics. Ranga Dasanaika was their audio engineer and Bhathiya too lent them a helping hand with a harmony arrangement. While songs such as "Oba Magemai" and "Angel" will be given a new beat there are also a couple of Sri Lankan "Wannama" tracks such as "Kalli Yugaya" and "Oba Ath Alla". The instrumental composed and played by Ranidu called "Back to the roots" will be in Ranidu's words, "Sri Lanka's first ever club track". So how did the duo get started? Ashanthi-"We were doing a couple of tracks before. We just suddenly decided to come up with our own album". Ranidu-"It took us about three and a half months to complete the album. Some of the songs are just re-workings as we've written them earlier. It all started out as a fun thing. But before we knew it we were onto something big". What do they feel about their music? Ranidu answers this one eagerly. "Our music is not just about following trends. Its natural. The music kind of just created itself. It is, as I said earlier, a mixture of everything. It has a background of R n B, Hip Hop and Dance. Part of this whole thing is to educate youth on music. Music in Sri Lanka has changed recently. You have to be creative to go forward. You cannot be stuck forever with the same old thing. I hope people will realise this, accept and appreciate modern Sri Lankan Music". Both just twenty one years old, Ranidu and Ashanthi have been in the music field from young days. Ashanthi a past pupil of Ladies College has been singing ever since she was a little girl, doing voice commercials. "I think I was influenced a lot by my mum who is a singer herself. In school I became the leader of the Ladies College choir. I owe a lot to aunty Marianne who has been the back bone of my singing, training me in classical music since I first joined her classes in 1997", Ashanthi recalls. Ranidu an active member of the Royal College choir, currently studying at Yale University U.S.A, started his journey to music by joining the primary school band. When he was fourteen or fifteen(he can't remember which) his mum bought him a piano and from that day onwards, he became a self-taught pianist. "Dilup Gabadamudalige taught me basic programming skills". Professionally, Ranidu has been a member of the winning team at the "2001 Azia Dauzi"Music festival in Kazakhstan and was chosen as a finalist at "TNL Onstage 2001". Ashanthi who dominated the advertising industry for some time, also has the distinction of being named the "Most promising female singer" at the 2000 Shanghai-Asia Music festival. She also performed for many rainbow foundation events since 1998 and has been billed to perform at the Miss Sri Lanka Pageant this August. Both Ashanthi and Ranidu have been members of the "Bathiya and Santhush" team since its conception. Ranidu was their rapper and performed with them on their recordings and live performances, and also composed "Mattangkulay" for their "LIfe" CD. Ashanthi meanwhile has been the main backup vocalist for both their albums "Life" and "Tharunyaye", and her song "Out of the blue" is featured in "Life". It was through "Bathiya and Santhush" that the two met. "We joined them at the beginning. They've been a great help to us. But now we feel the time has come for us to go on our own". What are they like as individuals? That can be clearly seen even before they speak. "Well I'm a friendly, bubbly, chirpy kind of person" chirps Ashanthi in a bubbly way and I have to strain my apparently deaf ears to hear Ranidu speak,and even ask him to repeat his words "I'm prettily laid back. At the same time I can be kind of funny at times. I'm a very determined competitive person. I believe in working towards my goal and am very goal oriented". While Ashanthi loves writing songs, poetry, drawing cartoons and caricatures she is also into drama and for some reason or other collecting pens. Her current favourite song, is the "Ketch up" song. Ranidu on theother hand being a national squash player, loves playing squash, cricket, swimming and rugby. A lover of music Ranidu's favourite song is "Superman" and being a great fan of trance loves the trance track "Ayla".What do they think of Sri Lankan music? Ashanthi-"A couple of the new bands are really good. Our youth have a lot of potential and are doing a lot for the music industry. Sri Lanka is getting a lot of new ideas into the music scene". Ranidu-"There is this big divide between the generations where music is concerned. People need to be more receptive of the new comers. The attitude people have towards local artists needs to change. They need to feel appreciated. Sri Lanka has a lot of talent. It just needs to be appreciated. The media should be more supportive to new Sri Lankan artists". One final question. What's it like working with each other? "Its cool working together. We have a lot of fun", says Ashanthi. "Ya, except sometimes, when she's a bit too rigid in doing things", says Ranidu with a grin. As for the future the two just hope to see the outcome of their CD release first."We hope it will be successful. Of course we want to work together in the future, but we'll take it slow. We also want to focus on our studies". by Farah Macan Markar |
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