W D ආරියසිංහ
11 songs performed
W. D. Ariyasinghe (ඩබ්. ඩී. ආරියසිංහ, also written W.D. Ariyasinghe or WD Ariyasinghe), born Widanelage Dharmaratna Ariyasinghe, was a Sri Lankan singer, composer, and music teacher whose warm, classically grounded voice carried popular Sinhala songs such as “Walawe Wahiwalawe” and “Ma Langatama Thawa Lanwela” across radio and home stereos for decades.
Ariyasinghe was born on 16 March 1956 in Kandy. He studied at Pilimathalawa Central College and went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of the Visual and Performing Arts in Colombo. During his university years he trained under the maestro W. D. Amaradeva, an apprenticeship that shaped the disciplined, melody-first style heard across his later recordings.
From the mid-1980s Ariyasinghe worked as a music teacher at several institutions while building a recording career. He became a Grade A singer at the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation and, over his lifetime, recorded a large catalogue of Sinhala songs. With his wife, the musician Darshani Chandrasena (daughter of the musician R. A. Chandrasena), he helped run the R. A. Chandrasena Music Institute. In 2017 he received a Kalabhushana state honour for his service to Sri Lankan music.
His recordings drew on writers and composers from the heart of the Sinhala song tradition, including lyricist Ajantha Ranasinghe and lyricist Upali Maldeniya, who penned “Walawe Wahiwalawe.”
W. D. Ariyasinghe died on 9 November 2020 in Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia at the age of 64, after a prolonged illness. His son Harshadewa continued the family’s musical line as a singer. For listeners at home and across the diaspora, the WD Ariyasinghe songs collected here pair the original Sinhala script with English transliteration and translation, so the meaning travels with the melody.
Every Sinhala lyric, composition, and song credit by W.D. Ariyasinghe.