G S B රානි පෙරේරා
4 songs performed
G.S.B. Rani Perera (ජී. ඇස්. බී. රාණි පෙරේරා), also written GSB Rani Perera and credited on early records simply as G.S.B. Rani, was a Sri Lankan playback singer, stage and film actress, and broadcaster whose recording career stretched across more than five decades. She was among the most prolific voices of early Sinhala cinema, and many of the cinema duets she recorded with leading male singers of the period are still played today.
She was born on 20 August 1930 in Guruwatta, in the Badulla district, into a Malay family. Her stage name came from her given name, abbreviated to the initials by which audiences came to know her, with “Perera” taken from her married name after she wed Anton Perera in 1953. She moved from the theatre stage into film work in the mid 1950s, a path common to her generation of Sinhala vocalists.
From the 1950s onward G.S.B. Rani Perera became one of the busiest female playback voices in the Sinhala film industry, recording for dozens of pictures and cutting sides for labels such as His Master’s Voice and Columbia. She sang alongside many of the era’s best known male artists, most notably Mohideen Baig, with whom she recorded the cinema duet Sandehi Sandun Wane (සඳෙහි සඳුන් වනේ) for the 1964 film Chandali. Her catalogue also overlaps with that of contemporaries such as Dharmadasa Walpola from the same studio-era recording scene.
One of her most enduring numbers is Sangi Sangi Aetha Sooraya Dilenna, a song closely associated with her voice and still circulated under shortened titles. A reworking she made later in life pairs her with Sudath Samarasinghe. In 2004 she marked sixty years of singing with a commemorative concert at the BMICH in Colombo.
Beyond music, G.S.B. Rani was active in public life and broadcasting, and her singing was interrupted for a stretch during a period of political tension before she returned to the air. She died on 7 September 2004. For listeners of the Sinhala diaspora, G S B Rani Perera remains a reference point for the playback singing of early Sri Lankan film, and her cinema duets continue to find new audiences.
Every Sinhala lyric, composition, and song credit by G.S.B. Rani Perera.