Angelene Gunathilake How we quantify grief

22 April 2019 01:09 am Views - 735

While she had an amazing range as a singer, delving into blues, gospel, baila, sarala gi and film song with equal ease, her duets with Jothipala and Milton are likely to remain unsurpassed in the annals of Sri Lankan film song

Angelene was dubbed the Silver Bell of the Sinhala Screen

 

The news of singer Angelene Gunathilake’s recent passing away hardly caused a stir in the print media.   
When reams were written about singers H. R. Jothipala and W. D. Amaradeva when they passed away, very little of any substance was written about Angelene. More space was given following her death on March 29 in commemoration of Srima Dissanayake, spouse of the late Gamini Dissanayake. In the English Sunday papers, there was hardly any mention, while among the Sinhala newspapers, columns such as that of Wimalanath Weeraratne in Ravaya were the exception.   
Why was this?   
I remember Angelene’s final concert at the BMICH, Colombo, in 2014. She sang over twenty of her hits flawlessly and with tireless energy. The radio stations, both private and State-owned, air many of her perennial favourites (sung mostly with singers H. R. Jothipala and Milton Mallawaarachchi) regularly. But few thought it worthwhile, to sum up, her life when she died.

 

"One doesn’t want to think of this as gender bias, though no other explanation comes readily to mind. However one may explain it, the deafening silence about Angelene’s death comes as culture shock and points to a crisis in the national psyche as to how we quantify grief when our national treasures pass away"

 

When singers of her calibre are in their prime, they are called national treasures. Angelene was dubbed the Silver Bell of the Sinhala Screen.  
While Latha Walpola and Sujatha Atthanayake too, hold equally important places in Sri Lankan playback singing of the 1960s and 70s, Angelene with her perfectly pitched vocals in the higher register, and an uncanny ability to sound joyous or tragic according to the context, seemed to be Sri Lanka’s Latha Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle both rolled into one.   
While she had an amazing range as a singer, delving into blues, gospel, baila, sarala gi and film song with equal ease, her duets with Jothipala and Milton are likely to remain unsurpassed in the annals of Sri Lankan film song. When H. R. Jothipala passed away, the entire country went into mourning. When W. D. Amaradeva passed away, the shock was equally profound and pages and pages were written about them. Their songs, lives and impact were analysed laboriously. When Angelene passed away, all we got were obituary notices. This indicates a neurotically uneven bias in our national mourning patterns (I can think of just one top female singer who will be mourned nationally when she passes away, and not entirely due to aesthetic reasons, but I’ll leave the guessing to you).   There exists a school of thought claiming that the loss of Jothipala had much to do with the decline of the Lankan film industry.   While this could be an oversimplified argument, one could also ask about the weight carried by Angelene, his principal singing partner in the film. When singing a duet, she wasn’t playing second fiddle to H. R. Jothipala. When his solo voice empowered Gamini Fonseka, Robin Fernando or Vijaya Kumaratunga, her solo voice empowered three generations of actresses from Vijitha Mallika to Malani Fonseka, Geetha Kumarasinghe (in her first film appearance) and Dilhani Asokamala. Is that achievement any less important than Jothipala’s? Angelene’s funeral did not draw massive crowds as Jothipala’s did. Will she be remembered as much in the years to come?   

One doesn’t want to think of this as gender bias, though no other explanation comes readily to mind. However one may explain it, the deafening silence about Angelene’s death comes as culture shock and points to a crisis in the national psyche as to how we quantify grief when our national treasures pass away.