Shrillness of Nonsensical Cultural Politics and the Social History of a Song

• by Prof Sasanka Perera 
• - on 02/08/2016 

The latest news from Sri Lanka’s often bizarre domains of cultural politics is that Buddhism is under threat along with Sinhala culture. This however, is not due to the corrupt and violent politics that still remain the hallmark of the country’s mainstream politics or because of the unethical and anti-doctrinal work of marauding Buddhist monks who have become storm troopers causing bodily harm to people, disrupting court proceedings and vehicular traffic in the country putting Hitler’s dreaded Brown-shirts to shame.  The apocalypse of Sinhala culture and the island’s Buddhism is supposed to happen as a result of Soprano Kishani Jayasinghe’s masterful rendition of the well-known Sinhala song, Danno Budunge within an operatic sensibility in a cultural program organized to mark the 68thanniversary of the country’s independence. Personally, I am thankful to the organizers of the event for attempting to do something out of the ordinary.

But going by the attacks on Jayasinghe orchestrated by sections of the mainstream media (see for example, the undignified assault by Derana TV) and the multitude of comments from unenlightened swaths of the social media, the doomsters’ main concern is that that Jayasinghe’s new rendition has insulted both Buddhism and Sinhala culture as they perceive these, and this act alone would bring the house that ‘Vijaya’ built, crashing down. Interestingly however, she also sang at the same event — in the same kind of musical sensibility — the old folk verse (paru kavi), “Matara gange inna kimbulige petiya”.  That however, has by and large escaped the scorn and anger of doomsters. One can assume this is because the latter has no reference to Buddhism while the former has. Musically speaking, both were good examples for specific genres of songs which can be successfully reinterpreted within the parameters of an entirely different genre, if one was competent enough to know what to do.

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