සුජාතා අත්තනායක
65 songs performed
Sujatha Aththanayaka (also romanized Sujatha Attanayake or Sujatha Aththnayake), සුජාතා අත්තනායක, born 12 May 1942 in Kelaniya, is a Sri Lankan playback singer, composer, and the country’s first female film music director. Across a career spanning more than seven decades she sang for hundreds of Sinhala films and recorded thousands of songs, and she is widely regarded as one of the most versatile female voices in Sinhala music.
Born into a musical household, Sujatha came up through formal study at the Heywood Institute of Art before continuing her training in India at the Bhatkhande Music Institute in Lucknow, where she earned the Visharada qualification in both singing and sitar. That grounding in Hindustani classical music shaped a voice noted for an unusually wide tonal range and the ability to sing across many languages, including Hindi and Tamil. She met her husband, Navaratne Aththanayaka, while studying at the State College of Music.
Sujatha Attanayake built her reputation as a prolific playback singer, lending her voice to roughly 400 Sinhala films and a number of Tamil productions. In 1975 she broke new ground by scoring films such as Hariyata Hari and Sanda Kinduru, becoming the first woman in Sri Lanka to work as a film music director. Her recorded output runs to thousands of songs and well over a hundred cassette releases, a body of work few of her contemporaries matched.
Many of the recordings that defined Sujatha Aththanayaka’s career are featured on Lyrics-lk, with Sinhala lyrics alongside English transliteration and translation:
Honoured with the titles Kala Suri and Visharada and recognized with a Swarna Sankha award and a later honorary doctorate, Sujatha Attanayake holds a settled place in the history of Sinhala film and popular music. For listeners across Sri Lanka and the diaspora, recordings such as Jeewana Vila Mada remain the most enduring part of her legacy, and her standing as the first female music director keeps her name in any account of women in South Asian film music.
Every Sinhala lyric, composition, and song credit by Sujatha Aththnayake.