Musical Trends of the Songs Created by Sunil Shantha

Abstract

The origin of music has occurred with the intellectual development of the human revolution. Song is the major tool of distributing the taste of music among the people. Sunil Shantha can be identified as a pioneer musician who lead to turn the Sinhala music path in to new direction (marasingh ,2007). Sunil Shantha had a clear, systematic and philosophical idea about music education and local form of music (eiriyagolla,1983). As a result of that he was able to create new sinhala song tradition with the new set of characteristics such as simple melody with limited notes(swara), Use of limited instruments related to hindusthani and local musical tradition, creative melody, attractive rhythms and fascinating singing style. These creations subjected to develop a new genre of Sinhala songs. The basic objective of this research is to identify the musical trends of the songs created by Sunil Shantha. This study tries to analyze the musical forms of selected songs created by Sunil Shantha. Content analysis method, Interviews with the expertise in musical field and literature such as books written by Sunil Shantha, biography and reminiscence, were used to collect qualitative data. The multicultural music influences such as western music, North Indian hindusthani music, church music and Sri Lankan folk music could be identified in the creations created by Sunil Shantha. Using above various traditions of music he was able to create his own musical pattern with the set of unique features. Through this study researcher was able to identify the impact of above mentioned song creations on developing local unique song tradition