ක්රිස්ටෝෆර් පෝල්
6 songs performed
Christopher Paul (also spelled Christoper Paul) was a Sri Lankan singer whose warm, unhurried voice carried some of the most enduring Sinhala love songs of the 1960s and 1970s. Born in 1936, he became one of the island’s most sought-after recording and stage performers, remembered for evergreen numbers such as Wathura Nala and Ha Mal Pipenne.
Christopher Paul received his primary and secondary schooling at St. Sebastian’s College, Moratuwa, a town on Sri Lanka’s western coast with a long musical tradition. He came up through the live-performance circuit rather than playback cinema, building a following as a concert and recording singer.
Paul was among the most in-demand Sinhala singers of the 1960s and 1970s and remained active on stage for more than four decades. He performed widely at indoor and outdoor concerts across the country and toured several countries overseas for the Sinhala diaspora. Late in his career, the Department of Cultural Affairs staged a tribute concert in his honour in Colombo, at which he sang a long set drawn from his best-known recordings, the one major solo concert of his life.
Christopher Paul’s reputation rests on a small but durable group of melodic love songs that are still played at Sri Lankan weddings and on radio. Among the most familiar are Wathura Nala (often written “Wathura Naala”), the longing ballad Ha Mal Pipenne, and Ela Dola Ganaga Yawi Gala. Other recordings of his, including “Muthu Bello” and “Katuroda Gammane”, remained concert favourites throughout his touring years.
Christopher Paul died on 18 May 2023 at the age of 87. He is remembered as a singer of the gentle, melody-led era of Sinhala popular song, and his recordings continue to find new listeners among Sri Lankans at home and abroad. Lyrics-lk hosts his best-loved songs with Sinhala lyrics and English translation, so a new generation can read along with the words Christoper Paul made familiar.
Every Sinhala lyric, composition, and song credit by Christopher Paul.