ආනන්ද සමරකෝන්
5 songs performed · 5 compositions · 3 lyrics written
Ananda Samarakoon (also spelled Ananda Samarakon), ආනන්ද සමරකෝන්, was a Sri Lankan composer, lyricist and painter, widely regarded as the founder of modern Sinhala geeta sahitya (artistic song literature) and best known as the man who wrote and composed the Sri Lankan national anthem, Sri Lanka Matha (ශ්රී ලංකා මාතා). He lived from 1911 to 1962, and his short career reshaped what a Sinhala song could be.
He was born on 13 January 1911 in Watareka, Padukka, as Egodahage George Wilfred Alwis Samarakoon, the name he carried before adopting the name by which he is now known. He studied at Christian College, Kotte, and later travelled to Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan in India, the institution founded by Rabindranath Tagore. Though he stayed only briefly, the exposure to Tagore’s marriage of poetry and melody shaped his lifelong conviction that a song should carry literary weight, not just a tune. On returning to Ceylon he changed his name to Ananda Samarakoon and embraced Buddhism, and he taught music and art at Mahinda College, Galle.
In the late 1930s Samarakoon set out to replace the North Indian film-tune imitations then dominating local recordings with original Sinhala compositions rooted in Sri Lankan language and feeling. The result was a body of work that listeners and critics treat as the starting point of serious Sinhala songwriting. His early recordings, including Endada Menike and a string of nature and devotional pieces, established the template later carried forward by the artists who followed him.
Samarakoon wrote both the words and the music of Sri Lanka Matha, first known as Namo Namo Matha, composed in 1940 and first sung by students of Mahinda College. It was adopted as the national anthem of Ceylon on 22 November 1951. He died on 5 April 1962 at the age of 51, his death widely attributed to his distress over alterations made to the anthem’s opening line without his consent. That the same name appears on the discography here as both composer and lyricist of the anthem is itself the clearest mark of who he was.
Decades after his death, Ananda Samarakon is still treated as the father of authentic Sinhala song, and his anthem opens every official occasion in Sri Lanka. His compositions are also performed by later singers; the lyrics he wrote for Siri Daru Heladiva Purathane are sung here by Sujatha Aththnayake, and his melody for Aradhana is voiced by Kanthi Wakwella. For Sinhala listeners and the diaspora, his work remains the bedrock of the tradition.
Every Sinhala lyric, composition, and song credit by Ananda Samarakon.
Performed by: Sujatha Aththnayake (සුජාතා අත්තනායක)