As a youngster Kalinga Weerakkody was inspired by veteran Sri Lankan
singers C.T. Fernando, Nihal Nelson,
Clarence Wijewardane and “Father of Sri Lankan
Group Music” Noel Ranasinghe who introduced
new singing styles and traditions to Sri Lankan popular music culture
and other group musicians in the 1960s and ‘70s. He also admired
the melodies and music directions of late R.A. Chandrasena
(renowned as Naushad of Sri Lanka) and late Lal Thenabadu.
Kalinga began his professional music career in late 1997 by recording
four songs for which music was directed by veteran music director
late Lal Thenabadu. Lal has the distinction of directing most number
of songs sung by veteran vocalist Nihal Nelson who became the first
and only singer in Sri Lanka to sing for most number of cassettes,
which is to date 111. In general Lal has directed music for many
leading Sri Lankan vocalists throughout his musical career, which
extended for more than 40 years.
Kalinga states that he chose Lal, a veteran in Sri Lankan group
music, to direct his songs to create music in an innovative style
with the intension of creating his own style of singing. He fulfilled
this task through careful selection of the lyrics, rhythm and concepts
of music sounds. Kalinga is grateful to late Lal Thenabadu, the
guru of his singing and musical career who passed away on September
10, 2007 at the age of 57. He also thanked his mentor in music vocalist
Nihal Nelson.
To date Kalinga has many songs to his credit and these include duets
with the Father of Sri Lankan Group Music Noel Ranasinghe and his
mentor Nihal Nelson. He has written several songs and created melodies
for his own compositions and had done musical arrangements for all
of his songs with hand picked veteran musicians. Most of his songs
were written by Dr. Ajantha Ranasinghe as well as veteran group
musicians Noel Ranasinghe (La Ceylonians), Melroy Dharmaratne (Dharmaratne
brothers), Priya Peiris (La Bambas) as well as veteran lyricist
Vernon Perera. Kalinga also has original English compositions written
by these veterans. He hopes to release CDs in the near future.
Journalistic career
Kalinga is grateful to late Premakeerthi de Alwis
who encouraged him to write to children’s and other radio
programs when he was at the age of 12 between 1988 and 1989. In
1998 he joined as full time journalist, ‘The Island’
English newspaper of Upali Newspapers group and worked till 2004
covering all the aspects of journalism which included the local
pop music scene. He remembers with gratitude the former chief editor
of the ‘The Island’ Gamini Weerakoon
and late R.L. Fernando for their helping hand.
Currently Kalinga continues his writing for other Sinhala language
newspapers Divaina and Rivira.
Education
Kalinga is a former student of Royal College, Colombo, Sri Lanka
(1982-1995). He graduated with a Special Degree in Political Science
from University of Colombo, Sri Lanka (1998-2002) and thanked Professor
Jayadeva Uyangoda for assisting him in his academic
career. He also holds a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) degree from
Monash (Caulfield) University in Australia (2005-2006).
Special thanks
Kalinga thanks and remembers with much gratitude his father Premawardena,
mother Sama for their unstinted support in furthering
his career.
