Beginnings in Colombo and beyond

Exploration Colombo

Colombo a city of endless tuktuks, roasting tarmac, honking buses and the occasional oasis of calm.
We decided to spend a few days getting to know the city and being inspired by its urban charm.
On the first day whilst looking for a ride we come across this bizarre site.

 

A tuk tuk seat cover with the bilingual NRW logo is parked on the side of the road with a smiling driver. This is a sign from the gods that we must use this tuk tuk for all our journeys!

 Vikramnathan the driver turns out also to be the sweetest and most generous of souls and speaks a fair smattering of English. He is now our guide in Colombo.

We explore the markets and cafes with him and also track down a music shop.

We have proposed a two prong approach to the development of our work whilst we are here. The exploration of music and botany/ecology.

Before leaving the UK we started to research violin music in Sri Lanka and came across an ancient musical instrument, the fabled Ravanhatha purportedly the first bowed instrument in history.

It is named after Ravana  (meaning roaring in Sinhalese) a devout follower of Shiva who plays the Vena (another Indian instrument) and has ten heads.

                       Ravana

We looked to see if we could find a Ravan hattha in but could not find one, so we bought one from India and bought it here with us. The instrument turned out to be pretty hard work as it was so badly set up, but after a lot of faffing around with bits of bone, horse hair and strings its finally starting to sound oaky and pretty playable. It has 15 sympathetic strings that resonate when you play the single  rh horse hair string with a bow.

   The Ravan hattha                        Dinesh playing the Ravan hattha

During our explorations we also tracked down the violinist Dinesh Subasignhe who is a bit of an expert on the Ravanahatha. He invited us to an exciting tour of the Sri Lankan Broadcasting (formally the Celon Broadcasting Corp) buildings and studios where he records a TV show playing  a mix of different genres of music. He has invited us to appear on a world music special where we will improvise together with some of our tunes....we will wait and see how that turns out!

The CBC building is an amazing throwback to the days of colonial broadcasting C1920 replete with corridors full of old recording equipment, big red lights to show the studios are live and an exciting canteen.

We also visit the archive and get a listen to the first ever recording made at the CBC in 1946 - seemly played on a turntable from around the same era. They have hundreds of thousands of recordings in the archive. We may return.

 The first ever recording in Sri Lanka