ශිරෝමි ප්රනාන්දු
13 songs performed
Shiromi Fernando (also spelled Shiromie Fernando), ශිරෝමි ප්රනාන්දු, is a Sri Lankan pop singer who became one of the recognisable child voices of the Sooriya Records era. She is remembered above all for the 1971 hit Konda Namagena, a playful Sinhala number that has stayed in circulation for half a century and is still loved as a children’s song.
Fernando grew up inside one of Sri Lanka’s best-known musical families. She was a niece of the Dharmaratne Brothers, the band founded out of the Dharmaratne household, and was raised in that environment of singing and arrangement. The lyricist and musician Melroy Dharmaratne trained her vocals and wrote the words for her songs, which is why so much of her early catalogue carries a consistent, family-shaped style.
Shiromie Fernando entered the recording scene in the early 1970s. Her breakthrough came in 1971, when Konda Namagena was cut alongside several other tracks on an EP for the Sooriya label. The song’s bright melody and comic, everyday imagery made it an immediate favourite, and it carried the rest of her recordings with it. Much of her output sits in the folk-pop and novelty register that Sooriya popularised in that decade.
Beyond Konda Namagena, Fernando is associated with a run of light, narrative Sinhala songs that listeners still pass down to their children. Handa Haami (හඳ හාමි) and Pulun Kotta Ath Deka, also known by its refrain Balal Hamine (බළල් හාමිනේ), are among the most enduring. The same warm, slightly comic storytelling runs through titles like Pembara Amma and Sakala Bujan Kota Kalisan.
Shiromi Fernando’s recordings have outlived their moment because they crossed over into the shared canon of Sinhala children’s songs, sung at home and in school long after the original EP went out of print. For the diaspora, hearing Konda Namagena or Handa Haami is a direct line back to childhood. Lyrics-lk hosts these songs with their Sinhala script, transliteration in English (Singlish), and English translation, so a listener can follow both the sound and the meaning.
Every Sinhala lyric, composition, and song credit by Shiromi Fernando.