පුන්සිරි සොයිසා
27 songs performed
Punsiri Soysa (also spelled Punsiri Soyza), පුන්සිරි සොයිසා, is a Sri Lankan singer known for a run of melancholic love songs that have stayed in steady rotation since the 1980s. Recording from his base in Moratuwa, he built a catalogue of breakup ballads and gentle pop that earned him the affectionate Sinhala nickname tied to the “tear of parting,” and a national Kala Bhushana honour for his contribution to the arts.
Soysa was educated at Prince of Wales’ College in Moratuwa, the coastal town that has produced many of Sri Lanka’s pop and baila musicians. He began recording in the 1970s and built his performing career through the following decade, drawing on pop, soul, and rhythm and blues alongside the Indian classical phrasing common to Sinhala light music of the era.
Punsiri Soysa’s reputation rests on a cluster of songs about longing and lost love. “Nohadan Landune” became one of his most widely played recordings, and “Ganga Diya Wel Gala” and “Me Bus Nawathuma” remain among the titles listeners most associate with his voice. “Egodath Megodath”, a song built around the imagery of an old bridge crossing, is another of his enduring narrative numbers.
His material spans the romantic and the reflective, from “Sewwandiyakata Pem Banda” to the quietly resigned “Bindunu Kalaka”. The same songs that circulate on older Sinhala lyric archives appear here with transliteration and English translation, so a bilingual listener can follow both the sound and the meaning.
Active as a performer from the 1970s into the present, Punsiri Soyza has toured Sinhala audiences across the Gulf states and Europe and continued releasing new material into the 2020s. For the Sri Lankan diaspora his ballads function as memory music, the kind played at gatherings far from home, which is why titles like “Nohadan Landune” and “Me Bus Nawathuma” still draw steady searches decades after their release.
Every Sinhala lyric, composition, and song credit by Punsiri Soysa.