One of the best known and most honoured singers of Sri Lanka, Sangeetha Visharada Dr Nanda Malini — the artist who marked an entire epoch in the Sri Lankan art of song, and who was honoured as “the Golden Voice of the Nation” — bade farewell to her life journey, just three days before her 83rd birthday. For close to seven decades, she nourished the hearts of this country’s people with her voice, and her passing leaves a void that cannot be filled — not only in the world of Sri Lankan music, but in the entire progressive cultural current that raised its voice for justice and fairness.
From a Village Home to the Nation’s Stage
Born into a village family, she was educated at Sri Gunananda Vidyalaya in Kotahena, Colombo. She took the first step of her life journey of singing in 1956, winning the gold medal at a verse-recitation competition. That sweet voice, which the country came to know through the song “Budhu Sadhu”, sung at the “Lama Mandapaya” at the invitation of Pandit W. D. Amaradeva, also went on to conquer the world of cinema, with the song “Galana Gangaki Jeevithe”, the duet she sang with Narada Disasekara in the film “Ranmuthu Duwa”. The classical training she received at the Bhatkhande Music Institute in Lucknow, the Visharada degree she earned with first-class honours in 1984, and the honorary doctorate of “Darshana Suri” conferred on her in 2017 by the University of the Visual and Performing Arts all bear ample witness to the scholarly foundation of her artistic life.
Yet it is not by the number of her awards, nor by her popularity alone, that Nanda Malini should be remembered. Love, longing, a mother’s tenderness, the experiences of women, Buddhist devotion and social injustice were all themes of her world of song. She enters history as the artist who transformed the song of Sri Lanka from a mere ornament into a powerful instrument — one that laid bare social reality and gave voice to the anguish of an oppressed people.
Nanda Malini and the Vimukthi Gee Tradition
An early landmark of Sri Lanka’s tradition of protest song may be found in “Shravana Aradhana”, the concert series that Visharada Nanda Malini and Visharada W D Amaradeva launched in 1971. As the first Sinhala concert series to take a progressive form, it prepared the ground for the radical song culture that was destined to blossom in the decade that followed. Then, on 26 July 1978, at the New Town Hall in Colombo, the Society for Socialist Culture brought to the stage the “Vimukthi Gee” concert — Songs of Liberation — and with it wrought a political transformation in the Sri Lankan art of song. The mission of the Vimukthi Gee concert was to deepen, through the medium of art, the people’s awareness of social reality.
To that historic journey Nanda Malini was connected in numerous ways. Alongside artists such as Dr Rohana Weerasinghe, Malani Bulathsinhala, Lakshman Wijesekara, and Gunadasa Kapuge, she contributed actively to those concerts, and she also composed the music for one of the Vimukthi songs — Sathi Pooja Dara Saye — an adaptation of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore. In the message she contributed to the commemorative volume published for the concert’s 100th performance celebration in October 1980, she acknowledged with humility the inspiration she had drawn from Vimukthi Gee in bringing a radical outlook into her own art of song. That acknowledgement stands as testimony both to her honesty as an artist and to the mutual nourishment that flowed between the people’s art movements of that era.
The Great Lady of the Anti-Systemic Song Tradition
Drawing also on the inspiration of Vimukthi Gee, and nourished by the lyrics of Professor Sunil Ariyaratne, her concert series “Sathyaye Geethaya” — the Song of Truth — came before the public in 1981. After that series, which ran to nearly five hundred performances, came “Pavana” — the Wind — launched in 1987, which entered history with two hundred and five performances in the space of eighteen months. What made “Pavana” extraordinary was that it rose as a fearless voice against the repression and terror of the regime then in power. Its songs were banned from state radio and television, and in an age when even possessing a “Pavana” cassette carried risks, the people hid those songs in their hearts and kept them safe. That is the highest tribute a people can ever pay to a work of art.
As Professor Jayadeva Uyangoda has rightly observed, what found expression in Nanda Malini was a voice and a style of singing that subtly blended controlled emotion, anti-systemic social anger, and the cry of protest — a voice that addressed the listener’s intellect as much as the heart. In “Ammawarune” she gave voice to the grief of mothers who had lost their children; in “Sannaliyane”, to the pain of the lives of the dispossessed; in “Ran Dahadiya Bindu Bindu”, to the worth of the worker’s sweat. Her songs never gave commands to the listener; they carried to the hearts of the people, wrapped in beauty, their message about social reality and the necessity of change. And in nurturing the stream of anti-systemic song that emerged in the late eighties and the nineties — including Maestro Kapuge’s “Kampana” and Jayathilaka Bandara’s “Sadhu Janarawa” — her pioneering service was immense.
A Personal Note
At this moment I must also set down some of my personal memories. I can still visualise her driving an Upali Fiat car in 1978, when I was based at the JVP head office at Armour Street in Colombo 13. I still recollect meeting her at Nawala house with comrade Rohana Wijeweera. In 1983, while I was being held, at the Fourth Floor of the Criminal Investigation Department on bogus allegations, attempts were made to insert Nanda Malini’s name into a statement of mine, so that she too could be brought to the Fourth Floor. To this day I remain glad that I was able to thwart that attempt, and that I was able, through Chitra, to let her know of it. Years later, in the nineties, I had the privilege of carrying a major share of the workload of organising one of her concerts in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) in Australia — a memory bound to that peerless artist which will remain in my heart forever.
An Undying Legacy
Nanda Malini was never merely a singer on a stage. She was an ambassador who carried the Sinhala song to the world, performing in the Soviet Union, Germany, France, Italy, Singapore, and many other lands. She was a teacher and mother-figure who, founding the “Nanda Malini Ashramaya” in 1984, gave a musical education to a whole generation of children. She won honours beyond counting — eleven Sarasaviya awards and a host of Presidential awards among them — and was held in such national esteem that a studio of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation was named after her. Yet her true monument is built neither of brick nor of brass, but in the hearts of an oppressed people.
The passing of Nanda Malini is not merely the farewell of a single singer. It is the close of a great era in that tradition of Sri Lankan music. But true art does not submit to death. Today that magnificent voice has fallen physically silent; yet wherever a voice is raised against injustice, in every moment that a mother’s love is remembered, in every heart that dreams of a better world, her song will echo again and again. The field of Sinhala song that she sowed and brought to harvest will never wither.
Dear comrade — Visharada Dr Nanda Malini — voice of the people, peerless daughter of the anti-systemic song tradition of the people of Sri Lanka: we offer you our final salute! May your voice resound over this land forever!
