A podcast by Isuru Kumarasinghe and Devana Senanayake
Featuring:
King Ratnam
Anu Madhubhashinie
Dinupa Kodagoda
Ajith Kumarasiri
Namini Panchala
Aragalaya: Inside the People’s Struggle in Colombo
Episode 12 of the Timezones podcast series, co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut. This episode explores the creation of art during the political struggle that has shaped Sri Lanka and its capital Colombo since the start of 2022. Sound artist Isuru Kumarasinghe and journalist Devana Senanayake share the perspective of artists and musicians who either lived permanently or temporarily around the Gota Go Gama camp, one of the central sites of the protest.
Since the start of 2022, Sri Lanka has been experiencing an economic crisis sparked by a lack of fuel and gas, electricity cuts, skyrocketing prices of food staples, and shortages of medicine. As the conditions worsened, quiet candle-lit vigils rose up around the country and they soon exploded into a series of larger, roadside protests.
In April 2022, a protest outside the president’s house in Mirihana, one of Colombo’s suburbs, led to the arrest of protestors, a declaration of a “state of emergency”, and a social media ban. In response, protests proliferated throughout the country.
Protestors had multiple demands but the main one asked for the resignation of the president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Chants that included the president’s nickname, Gota, such as “Go Home Gota”, could be heard at the protests. People set up a camp that included medical tents, ambulances, food, a library, and an art center – all for free – in Colombo’s oceanside urban park, Galle Face Green. They named this site Gota Go Gama (Gota Go Village). During the protests, several other protest villages popped up in urban areas around the country.
Despite an attack on May 9, 2022 by a pro-state mob, arrest of protestors, and consistent disinformation, protestors achieved many things – the resignation of several Rajapaksa family members from the Cabinet, the resignation of prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, and even the resignation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa on July 9. After an early morning attack by police and the army on July 21, protestors received an order to leave Gota Go Gama on August 12. All of them followed this order and vacated the premises.
Explore a playlist of artists from Colombo and their current releases. A mix of original Sri Lankan popular and underground tracks both by Sinhala and Tamil artists, curated by King Ratnam.
[0:74] King Ratnam Po ratam valaya. Let the protests live on.
[2:13] Anu Madhubhashinie
I find it interesting that you said toxic relationship. Because I feel like the majority of Sri Lanka – when it comes to, I guess, millennials, and Gen Z – I feel like we are all in toxic relationships with the previous generation, including our parents sometimes.
[2:35] Anu Madhubhashinie
I mean, we have this very traumatic experience, all of us have in many ways grown up in trauma, grown up with the war, grown up seeing our uncles getting killed or parents getting punished for the good things they are doing and for being honest and conducting themselves in integrity at work, you know, various things like that. I feel like we have… we have… we are mashed in between this…
[3:12] Namini Panchala
Given where I am now compared to where I was before, I had no clue what would happen. What… how things would have been. So, I guess, I really have no clue how things are going to go. But personally, I am just going to observe, to act, to do what I think is right, and see where that takes me; see where my own journey, and the journey of this society as a whole, to see where it takes me.
[4:11] Ajith Kumarasiri
Yeah, it was happening you know, the mixing of all the outer pitches and pitching and making some different chords, you know. It’s not major/minor, it’s different chords. If you carefully listen then… what is Gota [Go] Gama pitch, so you can find… it’s a different mix of... There is a coherence, you know… the pitches. Whether they are out… I was listening to that sound, the whole sound. The… that some people make “Kaputa Kak Kak Kak”, some people getting into another “Basil Basil Basil Basil” – “Kaputa Kak Kak Kak”. [Mimics the sound of the beat]. It’s like a Tamil movie sometimes, you know, it’s…
[5:07] Ajith Kumarasiri
Sometimes it’s like… “Tada da Taa” Beethoven’s symphony, “Kaputa Kak Kak Kak” – “Tada da Taa” – “Basil Basil Basil”. There are a lot of sounds there, classic sounds. I was imagining Beethoven and “Kaputa Kak” and everything gets triplets... [Mimics the sound of the beat].
[5:44] King Ratnam
You know, from the start of the protests – or the people’s movement I’d like to call it – we’ve seen people being criticized for the ways they protested. To… to bring a horn, you know. Some have chosen to dance, some have chosen to sing, some have chosen to do other things, some have chosen to go and break a barrier somewhere, you know so... But, you know so when this came up, you know the “Oh, you can’t protest like this”, my initial reaction was: you know, we as a country, this has happened in… I mean, if my memory is right, if my history is correct, this has never happened in this country, you know. Maybe in the 1950s, there was something like this, but not anything that we know of in the modern day. So, we don’t know how to protest, we don’t know how to… how a revolution evolves.
[8:00] Ajith Kumarasiri
Hear sounds from the sea you know… it’s continuously. So, if you talk, if you make any sound… you have to consider the sea sound. If you use sound equipment or without sound equipment. We have a challenge. The second thing is the sea breeze and the rain. Those sounds were already there before GGG [Gota Go Gama] has started. Then the most important thing is the sound of the people. Then the musicians. Then the musical things and other things. Noises.
[10:20] Dinupa Kodagoda [Devana Senanayake’s voice in translation]
As a result of everyone’s experiences, we need to be conscious citizens at this moment. We have tolerated a lot as people and cannot tolerate it anymore.
[10:51] King Ratnam
In any revolution, art has played an immense role. And I think that’s what art should be doing. Because art, like I mentioned before, we should be creating that mirror for the society to be honestly looking at themselves. And changing art cannot be preachy, we cannot be saying this is right, this is wrong, but we should rather be showing what is going on in a very honest form. And I think music, films, everything should represent that.
[11:28] Namini Panchala
People would often sing songs that have nationalist or racist undertones. They might not even be aware of that because these songs have been, I guess, poured into their heads since they were children. They don’t really focus on the lyrics. Or what the song was trying to say. Or the political, social, historical context of the song. We wanted to take it a step further. We wanted to make a change to that and bring forward original compositions as much as possible. And for that, we made sure we worked with a lot of artists.
[12:23] Ajith Kumarasiri
In the middle, a variety of things happen you know, in the middle. The different alternating music, sound excerpts, and a lot of things happening in the middle. So that was… let’s go!
[13:11] Namini Panchala
The tone was set by people themselves like the car horns of the people. I mean nobody would give them a pitch to start singing. They would start chanting. There’s probably coherence because you hear, you pick up the pitch from other sounds. The government or even certain other authorities in the country who oppress people with their sounds. You have certain institutions, religious institutions as well, playing something on loudspeakers, every evening or every morning or something. It would be very disturbing to other people. It’s not something that you ask for. And it was more democratic or like I said, more accommodating [at the protests]. Instead of a certain group of people saying, “Ok, we are the ones who have authority over sound in here”.
[15:06] Anu Madhubhashinie
Loving the people, despite, I mean, disregarding where they come from, who they really are – their gender, their sexuality, whether it’s a minority, the majorities – I think it’s, I don’t know, I feel like it’s a far-fetched dream, but still. We should work ourselves up to move there, I think loving should mainly be about acceptance. We need to tolerate, need to accept, we need to honor. That’s what a true leader of Sri Lanka should be doing.
[16:42] Namini Panchala
We designed a performance that features children. The children take center stage and they sing about their problems as children. There’s no electricity. My mom’s at the petrol queue. My dad’s at this queue. I don’t have friends. I can’t go to school anymore. Their problems. With the women from the parade backing them with percussion, and guitars, and other instruments.
[17:59] Ajith Kumarasiri
I was thinking, we will do some funeral marches regarding that. Some people brought mala bera, and Tamil… percussions and everyday life you know…
[18:21] Namini Panchala
And we also used the bell, the church bells, the small.
[18:24] Ajith Kumarasiri
Yeah, we got some…
[18:26] Namini Panchala Mala seemo.
[18:27] Ajith Kumarasiri Mala seemo. It’s called mala seemo. It’s a… the bell at what playing the Christians… for the Christian funerals. We got that also. And…
[18:40] Namini Panchala
We used nadeswaran. Used for Tamil processions, Hindu processions mostly.
[18:48] Ajith Kumarasiri
It’s a multicultural symbolization you know. Tamil, Hindu and Buddhist, Christian. I was there with a trumpet. I was playing that trumpet. It’s close to the impression of me and my God. I used that. It was a mixed kind of thing with several Tamil and Buddhist and Christian [incomprehensible]…
[20:47] King Ratnam
What these protests and all the people’s movement has proven, is that our conscience is still alive, you know, is still intact, thankfully. Yes, our minds might have been corrupted, you know divided, confused, call it what may. Our bodies have been, you know, we’ve been murdered, tortured, killed, arrested, whatever. But the conscience of this country and the conscience of the people of the mass still remains. And that is where we need to nurture the seed of love and honesty in our respect and understanding.
[22:01] Ajith Kumarasiri
I never experienced that kind of sound before GGG [Gota Go Gama].
King Ratnam is a director, actor, and musician. Currently he helps the Artists of the People’s Movement host marches as part of the people’s protests. Follow him on Twitter.
Anu Madhubhashinie is a vocalist, composer, and dancer. She has been trained in classical and Eastern practices in her music and dance. She is currently an artist camped on-site at “Gota Go Gama”. Follow her on Facebook or YouTube.
Dinupa Kodagoda is a vocalist, dancer, and an actress. She and her husband compose music about social issues related to human relationships and social justice. She has participated in several artists’ marches and contributed to the people’s protests this year. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or Spotify.
Ajith Kumarasiri has been a key figure in modern alternative music since the 1980s in Sri Lanka. He is committed to issues of social justice and human emancipation. Ajith engages with music in terms of a broader concept of sound as well as noise. Follow him on Youtube or Facebook.
Namini Panchala is a singer-songwriter, composer, and a film music director. She is committed to exploring activism through music, including with regards to women’s rights, animal rights, militarization, and equality. Follow her on Facebook or YouTube.
Isuru Kumarasinghe is a musician and sound artist from Sri Lanka and is based in Colombo. Through a listening practice his work focuses on the experience of sound perception and sound movements. He is a self-taught artist, who creates tools to transmit philosophies of listening, affect, and the relationship to the body into sound producing. He mainly works with electro-acoustic music improvisation, field recordings, as well as sound installations and performance. Kumarasinghe collaborates extensively with artists in the fields of music, dance, theater, and film, and is a co-founder of the Musicmatters collective in Colombo. He regularly produces music records and is currently co-founding the new producing studio Earscapes in Colombo. Follow him on Spotify or SoundCloud.
Devana Senanayake is a researcher, journalist, and producer who has experience in the U.K., Australia, and Sri Lanka. She has bylines in The Washington Post, Aljazeera, The Guardian, and Foreign Policy. Her sound art has been published in Voiceworks, The Lifted Brow, and Interior Journal. Follow her on her Website or on Twitter.
A Deeper Look into the Aragalaya (Struggle)
moderated by Janik Sittampalam, produced by Zainamb Wahid
In this bonus episode, we speak to Devana Senanayake and Isuru Kumarasinghe, the producers of the Colombo Timezones episode on the protest music of the Aragalaya. The economic and political crisis has affected us all here in Sri Lanka, and we talk about living as artists during this tumultuous time. In these past few months, we have witnessed a cultural revolution in addition to the political one, and Devana and Isuru reflect on the process of documenting and capturing the spirit of the protest. We compare this modern movement to the radical movements of Sri Lanka’s past, and how the work we do today might shape how people think of this time in the years to come.
Janik Sittampalam is a writer and journalist based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He mainly writes about history, culture, and philosophy, seeking the deeper connections lurking beneath the everyday. He also enjoys acting, both on and off stage.
Zainamb Wahid has studied at the SAE (School of Audio Engineering) Institute in Singapore. She has several years of experience as a radio producer and audio engineer, and has been employed in YES 101 and Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC). She is also a musician in the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka and the Gustav Mahler Society, and conducts violin and piano lessons privately. Follow her on Facebook.
Credits
Credits:
Artistic Editor: Abhishek Matur Project Management: Hannes Liechti Video Trailer: Emma Nzioka Jingle Voiceover: Nana Akosua Hanson Jingle Mix: Daniel Jakob Mastering: Adi Flück, Centraldubs Artwork:Šejma Fere
