Sparks
From "The Notes Of A
Vagabond Mind"
By Prasanna Ratnayake
25 June, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The
Sri Lankan film director and writer, Tissa Abeysekara, is one of our
greatest storytellers in both Sinhala and English. Two of the best examples
are his short novels, Bringing Tony Home, published in 1998; and In
My Kingdom of the Sun and the Holy Peak of 2004. These are landmarks
in Sri Lankan literature. His latest work, Ayalea Giya Sithaka Satahan
(Notes of a Vagabond Mind), this time in Sinhala, is a new genre in
itself; part autobiographical memoir, part cultural commentary, an exploration
of history through myths, folklore, archaeology and written documentation.
On reading this new book,
I was immediately reminded of R. A. Brohier’s books Seeing Ceylon
(1965) and Discovering Ceylon (1973) and of Martin Wickramasinghe’s
Kalunkla Seveema (In Search of a Panacea) (1950). The reflections which
follow are not a proper review but more a set of reactions, as idiosyncratic
and personal as the book itself.
Tissa is an outstanding writer
both Sinhala and English, with a gift for poetic expression which began
in his childhood and has become more powerful and sophisticated as he
has aged. This book, neither predominantly academic nor poetical, is
written in a language which uses both modes. Nor is it chronological
or methodological in its research and reflections. With profound insight
and no apparent effort, Tissa deconstructs modern Sri Lankan discourses,
showing us how hybrid is our island culture, indicating our weaknesses
but not condemning us for the narrow-mindedness of our preoccupations.
The first section of the
book deals with the Kotte period, followed by a series of pieces on
contemporary Sri Lankan music, then poetry and finally thoughts on visual
arts, national traits and cinema. It appears sometimes to be a collection
of articles; sometimes a meditation on his personal work and interactions
with world culture, art and history; and sometimes a conflation of his
internal discourse with the unfolding of events during his lifetime.
Flashbacks into the thousands of years of Sri Lankan history occur in
the midst of commentaries on present day subjects, moving back and forth
like a cultural time machine.
The early part of this book
about the historical Kotte period is politically the most interesting.
Unlike other kingdoms of the past, whose ruins are now international
tourist attractions, no physical traces remain of the Kotte era but
a rich literature, especially the Sandesha Kavya (message poetry), has
survived to the present day. The Kotte kingdom ended when it was overthrown
by the Portuguese in 1505.
Tissa is struck by the fact
that hardly any of the surviving complexes of temples and religious
institutions from later periods have any trace of secular life. Seeking
such evidence, Tissa has discovered in the historical and archaeological
records that the first traces of secular life are found from the Sigiriya
and Polunnaruwa periods onward. During the Polunnaruwa era, King Prakkramabahu
tried to enhance the feudal system by developing and building up secular
life, but many historians have observed that these large scale projects
took ordinary people off the land in service to the king, leaving no
one to tend or harvest their crops. As a result these schemes were unpopular
with the farmers and craftspeople and overall did not succeed. The last
of these failures at secular innovation was during the reign of the
last king of the Kandyan era, Sri Wickramarajasinghe.
Despite considerable complex
archaeological and historical evidence, the ethno-nationalist project
of recent decades channels interpretations of our island’s past
into the narrow lens of Sinhala-only accomplishments, considering the
Mahavamsa to be the sole authoritative text on Sri Lankan history. From
the works of archaeologists H.C.P. Bell, Senarath Paranavithana and
Daraniyagala to those of Sudharshan Senevirathne and the parallel investigations
of many historians, a much wider perspective is opened on our past and
present. Surely the time is long overdue for Sri Lankan scholars and
cultural commentators to initiate analyses similar to those of the Indian
Subaltern Studies Group. So far, Sri Lankan academics have followed
in the intellectual footsteps of colonial historian, accepting their
imperial misinterpretations. We have failed to generate any truly post-colonial
studies of our social or cultural evolution, unwilling to go beyond
the ethno-nationalist glorification of a Sinhala-only viewpoint.
By contrast, Tissa tracks
the events of our history cinematically, moving through maps, folklore,
historical and archaeological studies, interpreting as he goes along
in a vivid personal manner. Whether we agree with him or not, his argument
is so interesting and clever that we await the evidence which will confirm
his speculations.
In the second part of the
book, Tissa looks at developments in Sri Lankan music from the 1940s
to the present time. He covers what is known as the “gramophone”
phenomenon, the policies of the Sri Lankan Broadcasting Corporation
(SLBC) and the attempts to develop and experiment with musical traditions
by a range of different composers and performing musicians. He is particularly
interested in the work of Devar Sooriyasena, Ananda Samarkoon, Sunil
Shanta, C.T Fernando, B.S. Perera and Neville Fernando. These artists
were experimenting with Western music in combination with Sri Lankan
and Indian folk traditions. At the time the acceptable music was predominantly
Hindustani and little space was available for other approaches. Nonetheless,
many of the songs these composers wrote became and remain popular. Tissa’s
observation about the obligatory piano in the middle class sitting room
for the dissemination of gramophone and radio songs adds a class dimension
to his analysis. However, I am sorry to see that Premasiri Kemadasa’s
and Sarath Dasanayake’s film music, the wonderful Clarence Wijewardane
and other popular groups are left out of the account.
As most access to music was
available through the radio, Tissa looks at some of the internal struggles
within the SLBC, where various individuals promoted certain music according
to their personal interests and connections rather than the inherent
quality of the compositions. Tissa points out how many of these selections
and approaches actually damaged the development of Sri Lankan music.
(If, by comparison, we look at the development of West African music
during the same period, infused with influences from Latin America,
the blues, jazz, etc., we can appreciate what a loss it has been to
our tradition for apparatchniks to impede the freedom of creative musicians
through rigid broadcasting policies.)
The institutional paranoia
which plays out through such decisions reflects an insecurity about
the resilience and flexibility of Sri Lankan culture; the argument often
being that a piece of art which seems experimental will be ‘damaging
to our culture’. Such rigidity and fear may reflect subjection
to the long history of sequential colonialisms, all of which denigrated
and despised local traditions and culture and insisted on the superiority
of those of Europe and elsewhere. Another example was “The 43
Group”, which included Lionel Wendt, George Keyts, Justine Daraniyagala,
Ivan Peiris and Richard Gabriel, intellectual and artistic innovators
strongly resisted and resented by the cultural authorities. The librarian
and intellectual historian, H.A I. Gunathilake, assembled a large collection
of articles written against The 43 Group which are now in the Peradiniya
University library.
A further example pertains
to Sri Lanka drama. In 1956 Professor Ediriweera Sarchchandra’s
historical play Maname retold Buddhist Jataka stories and folk tales,
combining the classical Sri Lankan poetic language with nadagam music,
resuscitating the ancient form. Maname was massively popular with the
cultural authorities and was declared to be “authentically Sri
Lankan”, becaming the template or formula for subsequent productions.
When Bandula Jayawardana wrote his adaptation of a Sophocles drama Berahanda
(Sound of the Drum) in 1961 using colloquial expressions from the South
and the language of ordinary people, there was a huge outcry. Bandula
was condemned and his play severely criticised as not being authentically
Sri Lankan since neither the language nor the music followed the established
formats.
In this second part of the
book, Tissa also talks a lot about jazz, its history and development
in Sri Lanka. His ability to appreciate the trajectory of original Sri
Lankan music, from Devar Sooriyasena to Harsha Makalanda to Pradeep
Ratnayake, gives a picture of the scope and depth of cultural developments
largely suppressed and ignored by the authorities. These insights are
not abstract observations or opinions, but the reflections of a skilled
filmmaker whose attention to detail avoids all superficial commentary
and conveys a profound sensitivity to the music he discusses.
The third section of the
book is about poetry: the folk poetry passed down through the generations
as an oral tradition; the European and Sri Lankan classics; and modern
political poetry—including the Sri Lankan poets writing in English—which
has never been adequately appreciated. He also looks at the more obvious
influence of traditional Indian and Tamil poetries in the development
of Sri Lankan styles and formats. Tissa is interested in how modern
poets have adapted classical Sinhala genres as well as those of English
and Western poetry to address contemporary issues. His discussion includes
the graffiti poems at Sigiriya; the classical Sinhala poems of the Parakumba
siritha, Wannam and Nadagam; the Tower Hall Theatre songs to Ananda
Samarakoon’s songs; Wordsworth; Regi Siriwardena; Gajaman nona;
Sirilal Kodikara; Mahagama Seakara; Yasmin Gunarathne, Reyenzi Crazh;
S. Mahinda and Pablo Neruda.
The fourth section of the
book is a hodgepodge of articles on various subjects—everything
from the nature of patriotism and our national anthem to questions of
censorship and freedom of expression, from German expressionist cinema
to the films of Tarkovsky and Wim Wenders. The chapters are not held
together by a central argument, but are more like adventures in thought,
cinematically cutting from one image to another, creating a mood but
not a conclusion.
In these appreciations Tissa
is trying to cohere the many strands of influence, style, genre, classical
and hybrid forms and the politics of Sri Lankan life, sharing his personal
emotional and intellectual responses and opening a wider appreciation
of the rich context which gives rise to and sustains the essential dimensions
of our historical and contemporary culture. He is interested in the
way innovations disrupt received and official views, pushing the development
and possibilities at different moments in the long history of an art
form.
His attitude and arguments
can be compared to those of E.J. Hobsbawm and T. O. Ranger’s The
Invention of Tradition. That analysis is relevant to the Sri Lankan
experience in which certain individuals have introduced forms of art,
music, literature, theatre and film claiming that they represent our
“tradition”, when in reality they are only a matter of personal
taste. These then become “official” and are considered to
be rooted in history. To date there has been no systematic study which
deals with the origins and perpetuation of our modern cultural discourses
from the early 20th century to the present time. Although it is episodic
and idiosyncratic, this new book from Tissa Abeysekera contributes significantly
to the possibility of such a project.
Although a few of us are
mentioned, what troubles me and is missing from this fascinating and
engaging book is an interest in the experience of my own generation:
the young people who have suffered most from the political upheavals,
language policies, ethno-nationalism and civil wars which afflict our
country and have impacted so heavily on us. True, he includes in his
discussion of Sri Lankan cinema the work of Prasanna Vithanage, Ashoka
Hadagama, Vimukthi Jayasundara, and Sudath Mahadeulawewa. But I am puzzled
by the absence of any reference to the major events of 1958, 1971, 1983
and 1989, the huge numbers of creative people who have lost to exile
and the present return to war. Many works of art, and art movements
have been stimulated by and responded to these tumultuous times, amongst
them the No Order Group— Jagath Weresinghe, Chandragupta Theanuwara,
Kingsley Gunathilaka and Anoli Perera. And where are the poets V. I.
S. Jayapalan and Chearan, or the paintings of Shanatahnan and Kiko?
One cannot expect a total catalogue perhaps, but the absence of these
important contributions is strange and, to my view, very sad.
Perhaps even more surprising,
key works of his own generation—A. Sivanandan’s great novel
When Memory Dies, the poetry of Dominic Jeewa and of M. S. Numann, the
music of R. Muththuswamy—have escaped his attention. Tissa seems
equally unaware of the developments in Tamil and Muslim literature or
even the contributions made by Tamil lyricists like Augustus Vineyagarathnem
to Sinhala songs in the period he deals with.
Despite my delight in the
scope and depth of this excellent book, it sparks such questions in
my mind. I hope that Tissa will return to examine these strands in our
history and discourses and provide as exciting and insightful account
of these missing elements, so essential to a comprehensive view of the
country’s rich culture.
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