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| Sunday, 11 July 2004 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Making an impact for themselves in the outskirts of Colombo especially in Piliyandala, Pannipitiya, Maharagama and Kottawa areas is the six piece outfit "Janaki and the Lilacs." Its an unusual name for the group, you might say, considering the fact, that two-thirds of the band comprises male musicians. Actually according to the leader Janaki Edirisinghe when she started off the band in 1998 it was an all girl band, but over the years the girls left the band to get married or moved into other jobs and so with her sister Chamindika the bassist, they enroled in male musicians but the name stayed. The band with its repertoire of both Western and Sinhala music has been performing regularly at weddings and get-togethers, and also at open-air shows. Their big launch into the shows came with the opportunity to play at the Sinhala New Year celebrations in 2001 at Kosgahahena, Pannipitiya and since then have been featured yearly as the backing band for all the artistes perform at the show. Janaki's vision is to be one of the leading bands at open air shows like the groups Sunflower and Flashback.
She handles the arrangements of the music, and is happy that all her childhood dreams are now a reality. With the assistance of their energetic manager Ruwan Ekanayake who is a rhythm guitarist in the band, "Jamaki and the Lilacs" will soon be a band to be reckoned with. |
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| Produced by Lake House |
In a male dominated show band scene in Sri Lanka, Janaki is the only
female who is leading an Oriental band and quite successfully too. A past
student of Dharmapala College, Pannipitiya, young Visharada Janaki was
tutored by Shelton Premaratne, Premadasa Mudunkotuwa and Joy Miskin and is
quite a multi-instrumentalist playing guitar, violin, keyboards, piano and
drums.
