සුනිල් එදිරිසිංහ
163 songs performed
Sunil Edirisinghe (සුනිල් එදිරිසිංහ, also spelled Sunil Edirisingha) is a Sri Lankan vocalist and playback singer whose warm, classically trained baritone has carried Sinhala song since the early 1970s. Born Patikirige Sunil Jayapreethi Edirisinghe on 19 December 1949 in Colombo, he is known for film playback recordings and for a body of concert and recorded songs that pair literary lyrics with North Indian classical phrasing.
Edirisinghe grew up in Waragoda, Kelaniya, the youngest in a large family that included his filmmaker brothers Sathischandra and Nimal Edirisinghe. After schooling at Sri Dharmaloka Vidyalaya and Sapugaskanda Maha Vidyalaya, he pursued formal music study in India, attending the academy at Lucknow and graduating with first-class honours from the Bhatkhande Academy of Music in 1975. That grounding in Hindustani classical technique shaped the disciplined, raga-informed delivery that distinguishes his singing.
He debuted as a playback singer in 1969 with “Sandakada Pahana,” written for a film by his brother Sathischandra, and went on to record for the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation. His first cassette, Chandra Mandala, appeared in 1980. Film work brought national recognition: he won a Presidential Award in 1983 for “Maya Miringuva Pirunu Lo Thale” from Adhishtanaya, and later took Swarna Sankha awards in 1988 and 1990 and Sarasaviya awards in 1988 and 2002. Across this period he worked closely with composer Victor Ratnayake, among others, whose arrangements suited his classical training.
Lyrics-lk hosts a wide selection of Sunil Edirisinghe’s recordings in the original Sinhala script with English transliteration and translation. Among the best known is “Mata Ma Hamuwuna,” a tender reflection on self-recognition, alongside the philosophical “Lokayak Nasannata” and the devotional “Dalada Hamuduruwane.”
What sets Sunil Edirisingha apart is the marriage of classical control with plain emotional directness; his recordings favour poetry over spectacle, which is why they remain wedding and memory songs for Sri Lankan listeners at home and across the diaspora. Still active into his seventies, he released the album Sunila Yamaya in 2021, decades after his first cassette. The catalogue of Sunil Edirisinghe on Lyrics-lk gathers these songs with their meanings for readers who want both the sound and the sense.
Every Sinhala lyric, composition, and song credit by Sunil Edirisinghe.