යොහානි
6 songs performed · 2 compositions
Yohani (යොහානි), born Yohani Diloka de Silva, is a Sri Lankan singer, songwriter and rapper from Colombo, best known worldwide for her 2021 cover of “Manike Mage Hithe” (මැණිකේ මගේ හිතේ), the recording that turned a lockdown-era Sinhala pop song into a global phenomenon. Often styled simply as Yohani de Silva, she is among the most widely heard Sri Lankan voices of her generation.
Yohani was born on 30 July 1993 in Colombo. She studied at Visakha Vidyalaya and later took degrees in logistics management and accounting, including a master’s degree, before committing to music full time. She began posting cover versions and original material online from around 2016, building an audience on YouTube long before the song that made her name internationally known.
Her first widely noticed original single was Aaye, released in 2020, a track she also wrote, which established the smooth, melodic pop-rap style she would become known for. The turning point came in May 2021 with her cover of “Manike Mage Hithe,” originally performed by Satheeshan Rathnayaka with rap verses and lyrics by Dulan ARX. The site hosts her rendition at Manike Mage Hithe.
“Manike Mage Hithe” started as a lockdown-era Sinhala single by Satheeshan, and it was Yohani’s sung cover, released in May 2021, that carried it beyond Sri Lanka. Within weeks the recording spread across South Asia through short dance clips and reels on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and listeners who did not speak a word of Sinhala were singing along to the chorus.
The clip that pushed it into the Indian mainstream arrived in August 2021, when Amitabh Bachchan shared an edited sequence from his 1981 film Kaalia. The film’s original number, “Jahan Teri Yeh Nazar Hai,” had been swapped out for “Manike Mage Hithe,” and his on-screen dancing fell neatly in time with Yohani and Satheeshan’s track. The edit was the work of his granddaughter Navya Naveli Nanda; Bachchan posted it with warm praise, crediting Navya as the genius behind the cut and admitting the song had been playing on a loop all night.
Other Bollywood names followed with reels of their own, and the cover went on to gather hundreds of millions of views and to open film and recording work for Yohani in India. The Bachchan post remains the clearest marker of the moment a Sinhala song crossed into a far larger audience.
Beyond the breakthrough cover, Yohani has continued releasing original Sinhala and English material. Her single Kella (කෙල්ල), released in 2023 and written and composed by Yohani herself, showed her moving past the “Manike” moment with her own songwriting. Her viral fame opened doors in India, where she recorded for Hindi film projects and collaborated with established playback artists. Lyrics-lk also features her readings of Chuttak Chuttak, Kalu Kumara Nakathe and her cover of Pana Senehasa.
For Sri Lankan listeners and the diaspora, Yohani represents a rare crossover moment when a Sinhala-language song reached a mass audience far beyond the island. Her blend of pop melody and rap, sung mostly in Sinhala, made the language audible to millions who had never heard it before, and she remains a reference point for a new wave of Sri Lankan independent artists.
Every Sinhala lyric, composition, and song credit by Yohani.