සෝමසිරි මැදගෙදර
18 songs performed · 1 composition
Somasiri Medagedara (සෝමසිරි මැදගෙදර, also spelled Somasiri Madagedara) is a Sri Lankan singer and music director whose warm, soul-inflected ballads have circulated on radio and wedding cassettes since the 1980s. He is remembered for songs such as Sandai Tharui, Asa Imu Api and Muthu Muthu Wasse, sung in a romantic style that blends Sinhala pop with touches of soul, rhythm and blues, and Indian classical phrasing.
Medagedara was born on 8 November in the village of Theripehe, in Walapane, Nuwara Eliya, the youngest child of a farming family. His father, Medagedara Vidyaratne, worked the land, and his mother, Rankiri, helped with the cultivation. He studied at Theripehe Siddhartha Vidyalaya, where he first learned music under the teacher M. M. K. Tissa.
His formal start came in 1980, when he joined the newly formed youth choir of the National Youth Services Council and trained under Premadasa Mudunkotuwa and Sisira Kumara Marasinghe. Singers including Chandralekha Perera and Chandrasena Hettiarachchi were among his contemporaries in that group.
Emerging from the choir as a group singer, Medagedara built a catalogue of romantic ballads across cassette albums released from the mid 1980s onward, among them Magala Yahana (1986), Ahinsakaviya Obata Nowe (1989) and Sithak Bindunu Pasu (1992). Composers such as Shirley Wijayantha and Nihal Gamhewa wrote and arranged songs for him.
Several of his best known recordings are presented on Lyrics-lk with their Sinhala lyrics, transliteration, and English translation. He also composed for television, scoring teleplays including Irabatu Tharuwa and Holman Bottuwa, and worked within the Youth Services Council’s cultural division.
Medagedara married Neela Seneviratne and the couple have three children, two sons and a daughter. Listings under the spelling Somasiri Madagedara also point to the same artist. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2019 and faced related health complications in the following years.
Every Sinhala lyric, composition, and song credit by Somasiri Medagedara.