ගැමුණු විජේසූරිය
3 songs performed
Gemunu Wijesuriya (also spelled Gamunu Wijesooriya, ගැමුණු විජේසූරිය) was a Sri Lankan broadcaster, comedian, actor and singer whose voice became familiar to generations of Sinhala listeners, first on Radio Ceylon and later as the dubbing artist behind some of Sri Lanka’s best-loved tele-cartoons. His birth name was Gamunu Mahinda Wijesuriya, and he was born on 5 August 1934 in Dewalapola.
Wijesuriya studied at Udugampola Maha Vidyalaya and entered broadcasting at Radio Ceylon, now the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation. He came up through the children’s programme Lama Pitiya produced by Karunaratne Abeysekera, and his gift for voicing several distinct characters within a single programme made him a fixture of popular radio. He was a regular on long-running shows such as Muwanpalassa and Vinoda Samaya.
Gamunu Wijesooriya is most widely remembered for his dubbing work on animated programmes adapted for Sinhala television by Titus Thotawatte, including Dosthara Hondahita and Pissu Poosa. The comic character songs tied to that era remain his most-played recordings, and the playful, instantly recognizable delivery in them is the same voice audiences knew from radio. Lyrics-lk hosts several of these pieces in the original Sinhala script with English translation.
Beyond music and broadcasting, Wijesuriya appeared in more than twenty Sinhala films from the 1960s onward, among them Thun Man Handiya, Handaya and Re Daniel Dawal Migel 2, usually in comic roles. He died on 19 March 2007 in Colombo at the age of 75. For many Sri Lankans his cartoon character songs are a piece of childhood, and the recordings credited to Gemunu Wijesuriya continue to circulate among listeners at home and across the diaspora.
Every Sinhala lyric, composition, and song credit by Gemunu Wijesuriya.