අමරා රණතුංග
12 songs performed · 1 composition
Amara Ranathunga (අමරා රණතුංග, also spelled Amara Ranatunga), born Dona Amara Kasthuriarachchi, was a Sri Lankan singer, music educator, and exponent of Hindustani classical music. She is widely recognised as the first Professor of Music in Sri Lanka, and she remains beloved for warm, classically grounded songs such as Selalihiniyo Numba Danne Na and Maha Ra Yame.
Amara Ranathunga was born on 22 August 1939 in Batuwatta, Gampaha. She began singing as a child and trained formally in North Indian classical music, studying in India at the Bhatkhande institution from 1961 and later at Banaras Hindu University. That grounding in ragadhari technique shaped the disciplined, melodic style she carried through her recording career.
Alongside performing, Ranathunga spent decades in the classroom, eventually heading the music department and reaching the rank of professor in the mid-1990s at what became the University of the Visual and Performing Arts. Her repertoire moved between classical-flavoured Sinhala song, pop, and devotional material. Several of her recordings carry a Hindustani devotional colour, including Radha Krishna Rama Seetha, while others lean to the lyrical Sinhala idiom of her generation.
She frequently shared a stage and studio with her husband, the singer and musician Dayarathna Ranathunga, whom she married in 1964; their duet Maha Ra Yame is among the recordings the couple are remembered for.
Among the works on Lyrics-lk, Selalihiniyo Numba Danne Na (සැළලිහිනියෝ නුඹ දන්නෙ නෑ) and Eye Ra Oba are the titles most associated with Amara Ranatunga, and Palu Pale is a song she also helped compose.
Honoured in India with the Bharatha Mithra award (1997) and at home as a Janabhimani, Amara Ranathunga is remembered both as a performer and as the teacher who opened academic music study in Sri Lanka to later generations. She died on 16 October 2018 at the age of 79. Sri Lankan and diaspora listeners still return to the recordings of Amara Ranatunga for their unhurried, classically schooled warmth.
Every Sinhala lyric, composition, and song credit by Amara Ranathunga.