The fact that music evokes emotion is obvious. Certain melodies are embedded in our memories. What great moment in history is without an anthem? The power and the ability to change ourselves and change the world is always coupled with a soundtrack of one kind or another. Music is a lustrous light that enters through the ears and courses through the body, like the blood that flows within its veins.

When times get rough, the music carries us through the darkest of nights, like a canoe drifting off at sea through a cloud of uncertainty.

Over fifty years of composing, Khemadasa fused Sri Lankan folk elements, Indian ragas, and Western classical forms into glorious melodies that captured the deepest longings of the people who shaped his life.

Unique Blend

Against all odds, Khemadasa never stopped creating music. Khemadasa grew up in Talpitiya, Wadduwa and attended St. John’s College Panadura and then Sri Sumangala College Panadura.

Khemadasa is the only known Sri Lankan musician who practised and created opera. His famous operas include Manasawila, Doramandalawa and Sondura Varnadasi. Everything about Khemadasa is drawn in grandmaster strokes. He blended or harmonised instrumental music with human sounds.

His pioneering effort was effective in his very first Sinhala opera Kalemal, which was a significant star in his career. Perhaps the most salient feature of Khemadasa’s music is the use of Western classical music with increased use of folk rhythms. Music doesn’t lie. If there’s something to be changed in this world, then it can happen through music. It is as if the music of Master Khemadasa was a brush dipped in the happiness you feel in your heart, to paint a picture of a more colourful world. It fills the space in your mind and intensifies your emotions.

Opera content began to change in the Classical period. This was brought about by the social movement known as the Enlightenment. Jacopo Peri composed Dafne (1597), which many consider to be the first opera. From that beginning, two types of opera began to emerge: opera seria, or stately, formal and dignified pieces to befit the royalty that attended and sponsored them, and opera buffa, or comedies. The ultimate Classical opera composer was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Successful Ventures

For Khemadasa his large-scale operas have been some of the most successful ventures in Sri Lankan culture. He wrote groundbreaking musical scores for over 150 films, including many of Sri Lanka’s signature, internationally acclaimed classical films. He also wrote music for an award-winning BBC documentary.

When he died in 2008, thousands of Sri Lankans from all religions, ethnic groups, and classes came to pay their respects. In the Agni opera, you can listen to a one-and-half-hour musical performance giving the impression of a gigantic epic theatre because of its huge sonic canvas. Each new melody, harmony and rhythmic change is monumental and there is nothing to compare with it in the contemporary musical scene.

Born the thirteenth child into a poor rural family on the west coast of Sri Lanka, Khemadasa started with nothing. There was no musical heritage in his family. He was self-taught, learning how to play on cheap bamboo flutes when he was only 6 years old. He conducted his music in Beijing, Paris, Prague and Vienna. He received dozens of awards for his contribution to the music of his country. As a philanthropist and educator, Khemadasa started the Khemadasa Foundation to train young adults in music free of charge. His students came from small villages all over the island.

Khemadasa’s debut as a film composer came with Sirisena Wimalaweera’s Roddie Kella. With his score for Bambaru Ewith, he introduced a style of music unacquainted with Sri Lankan cinema. He then began collaborating with acclaimed director Lester James Peries handling the music for films like Golu Hadawatha and Nidhanaya. Dr. Khemadasa’s contribution to teledramas also brought outstanding masterpieces to the public.

His collaboration with director Jayantha Chandrasiri has turned out remarkable products whereas the themes he created for Chandrasiri’s television series Dandubasnamanaya have shown unprecedented power of mesmerisation. Late Khemadasa was an icon like Chitragupt Shrivastava popularly known as only Chitragupt, the renowned Hindi film music director of the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Primary Function

There’s something universal about the creative arts that’s good for health, and mental health in particular. Visual arts, drama, literature, and music, despite their differences, all have some things in common – they make us feel, provide meaning, stimulate reflection, and bring us together. Music connects us; one soul to another. When we move to the same rhythm, we momentarily live in harmony. In all societies, a primary function of music is collective and communal, to bring and bind people together.

Khemadasa was a vigilant creative force swayed via humanism, which lay deep in his heart. A repertoire of scores written for teledramas including Chandrasiri’s Weda hamine, Sathara denek senpathiyo, Akala sandhya, Dharmasena Pathiraja’s Gangulen egodata, Ella langa walawwa, Pura sakmana and Bandula Vithanage’s Asalwesiyo bestowed the public with unforgettable musical experiences. Also, he has contributed to the teledrama Sadisi tharanaya by Devinda Koongahage, which is most probably his last contribution to a teledrama.

The bottom line is that in all cultures, all over the world, music has a special place among humans and it affects us in characteristic ways. In those times when the day seems bleak, the melody of Khemadasa guides us through the darkness to the light, which lies at the end of the tunnel. Stage plays such as Angara Ganga and Aesop were some plays that exhibited his unique musical talent. Dharmasena Pathiraja’s Bambaru Evith also shows this link that expresses his insight into the capturing of life-giving nuances via musical expression.

Undeniable power

Music’s power is undeniable. It is used to evoke every emotion. It has been used to rally patriotism in times of war, as anthems of change during protests, as lullabies at bedtime, as remembrances at funerals, to calm us in turmoil, and as a refuge from the chaos of the world around us.

Plato’s famous lines in the third book of The Republic speak of how the musical modes are linked directly to the various character traits he is either for or against. Imagination is an organ of perception with which we can make this correlation: it pairs the physicality of perceived music with human moods.

The true beauty of music is that it connects people. It carries a message. This unique composer carved a name for himself and charmed his way into millions of hearts with his special type of evergreen music. He may have left us but his melodies continue to live on forever. Khemadasa produced original music prolifically throughout his life. Rhythms, melodies, and harmonies speak to us of immaterial things in the great works of Khemadasa.