Father Marcelline Jayakody’s Contribution to Sri Lankan Music

Abstract

Fr. Marcelline Jayakody was a Sri LankanCatholic priest, who is honored as a musician, lyricist, author, journalist and patriot.Having lived during a time of national awakening close to Independence, he composed music for the church,drawing from kavi and dances such as kulu-natum and kalagedinatum that existed in the country, using the indigenous languages, Sinhala and Tamil (Ariyaratne, 2003).In his contribution to Sri Lankan music, the original score written for the Duwa Passion Play of Negombo, is rated as the greatest Passion Play in Asia (Fernando, 2001). Fr Marcelline wrote lyrics for the Sinhalese film ‘Rekava’ (1956), which was a landmark in the Sri Lankan film industry, portraying an indigenous outlook, winning several international awards. In fact, Fr. Marcelline composed new hymns to contribute to the several centuries old ‘Pasan’that existed in Sri Lanka from over 300 years ago. Also very importantly he used folk music that already existed in the country for this purpose. The aim of my study is to explore the methods that Fr. Marcelline Jayakody used to compose his music: in context to musical elements such as rhythm, meter, texture and verse. I will be using already existing audio and video recordings of the hymns and Passion Play music composed by Fr Marcelline Jayakody with special reference to the Passion Play music composed by him for the Duwa Passion Play of Negombo, Sri Lanka.