‘Sunil Santhage Cinema Gee Pawatha’ (Story of Sunil Santha’s film songs) opens to public

A book in Sinhala titled ‘Sunil Santhage Cinema Gee Pawatha’ (Story of Sunil Santha’s film songs) published by Sunil Santha Samajaya is now open to the public. 

There are hundreds of books and articles printed on Sunil Santha locally and internationally covering various subjects on his musical career. But no book has yet been published covering his film songs. As such, the launch of a book limited only to musical creations of Sunil Santha for Sinhala cinema is a significant need of the modern era.

Sunil Santha made 16 songs of his own creations only for five films. Even if it is a meagre number of only 16 songs, the history of these creations is in broader recognition and deeper thought should be focused to protect them in the interest of the future generations.

All songs in Sinhala films were similar melodies from Hindi and Tamil until the introduction of indigenous creation of music for Rekawa film released in 1956. This practice of replacing popular Indian melodies changed with the introduction of Sri Lankan indigenous music for Sinhala film songs initiated by Sunil Santha with the creation of songs for Rekawa film. Before Rekawa all the film songs were recorded with Sinhala lyrics added to the melody. But with Rekawa film songs Sunil Santha set an example on the value and pride of creating a melody to the lyrics. Popularity of Sunil Santha’s creations caused the spread of some misleading rumour that certain melodies of Sunil Santha for films were not of his own.

The Development and Research Unit of Sunil Santha Samajaya realised the need of a book covering the entire gamut of history, facts and features of Sunil Santha’s film songs in an attempt to correct the misleading information and protect these songs for future generations. As a result, this book has been published. 

The author of this book T.K. Premadasa who studied at Peradeniya University and Templeton College, Oxford, United Kingdom is a guest writer of Daily FT. He worked in the Government and private sector as a Senior Executive for nearly 35 years. Since his salad days he has shown keen interest in writing articles. Initially he started writing on International Trade and related subjects professionally. Later he continued writing feature articles on Arts, History and Social Science both in English and Sinhala to be published in local and overseas press and magazines. He has also written several articles on Sunil Santha’s musical career and presently he is a Senior Researcher at Sunil Santha Samajaya. 

This book is now available for purchase at leading bookshops and online distributers.