මල්ලිකා කහවිට
4 songs performed
Mallika Kahawita (මල්ලිකා කහවිට) is a Sri Lankan singer associated with the golden era of Sinhala film playback and radio music from the 1960s onward. She is best remembered for warm duets with leading male vocalists of the period and for film songs that have stayed in circulation for decades.
Kahawita built her reputation as a playback and recording artist during the heyday of Sinhala cinema and Radio Ceylon. Her voice appears on film material as early as the mid-1960s, including “Senehasa Somnasa” from the 1965 picture Ladalu, performed alongside W. D. Amaradeva and Chandra Wayaman. That early credit places her among the singers who shaped the sound of Sinhala film music in its formative commercial decade.
Much of her best-known output is duet work. She recorded repeatedly with J. A. Milton Perera, one of the most popular male voices of the era, on songs that remain part of the old-favourites repertoire played at Sri Lankan gatherings and on nostalgia radio segments to this day.
Among the recordings featuring her voice are duets with Milton Perera such as Vinoda Wenna (විනෝද වෙන්න) and Sandun Gase Saman Welak, the latter long shared online simply as “Sadun Gase Saman.” Her solo and feature credits include Hinahevi Bonikka. More recently her voice has been brought to a new audience on Chandana Anga Gaala (චන්දන ඇග ගාලා), released as a feature alongside Narada Disasekara.
Kahawita belongs to a generation of Sinhala vocalists whose film and radio recordings became the standards of an earlier era. Her duets with Milton Perera and her film credit alongside Amaradeva keep her name in the catalogue of mid-twentieth-century Sinhala music that Sri Lankan listeners and the diaspora continue to seek out. Lyrics-lk presents these songs in the original Sinhala script with English transliteration and translation, so a listener can read along and understand the meaning.
Every Sinhala lyric, composition, and song credit by Mallika Kahawita.