1. Claude & The Sensations with Noeline Mendis - "City of Columbo"
2. The Fortunes - "Instrumental Baila Medley"
3. Independent Square - "Fade Away"
4. Tomcat and Magnum - "Emmental Dreams (feat Toc Toc Baya)"
5. Nu Age of Lau - "Libr(a)ries, Forests"
6. Jayanga Nanayakkara - "Damocles"
7. Asela Perera - "DESIGN"
8. Xacin - "Militia"
9. Wordsmith - "Pattie"
10. Wordsmith - "Self Portrait"
11. Wordsmith - "Shahdab"
12. Frantic Noise & The Pan Piper - "Golden Brown"
13. සතර අස්ථික - "Four Swinging Arms"
14. Baliphonics - "Analysing The Coconut"
15. Indrani Perera - "Eka Dawasak"
16. CT Fernando - "Ma Bala Kal"
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
NOTES:
This past Sunday, just two days ago, people of the fairly marginal Christian population on the island nation of Sri Lanka were celebrating Easter. At some point during the day, the festivities were interrupted by massive explosions. Several suicide bombers, apparently connected to the Islamic State, targeted several churches, Christians and spaces occupied by citizens of enemy states, killing (as of this morning) 321 people, and injuring around 500. It's absolutely devastating to read, and so I decided to make an episode of exclusively Sri Lankan artists out of solidarity with the nation, and to showcase the diversity of their music community. We've got everything from abstract electronics and folk to power electronics. It's kind of wild.
While looking up tracks for the show, I came across this great compilation of 60s-70s pop/rock tracks from both the Sinhala and Tamil peoples of Sri Lanka that has some absolute gems:
While the most easy to find music from the island nation was the traditional vocal-heavy kind, the type of stuff people relegate to "World" sections in Western record stores as a means of both validating the music and otherizing it at the same time as being "foreign", I decided to not follow that same path with this show. Part of what Western listeners do to art that comes from other countries and is made in other languages is we partition our value for that work, and only acknowledge it from this perspective we can more immediately comprehend as something that we don't understand, but exists. It doesn't necessarily endear the country or it's artists to us, but it acts as a surface-level appreciation on our end—a participation prize. Well, I figure "fuck that". I opened up Bandcamp, a modern music hosting platform, to see what the kids of Sri Lanka are up to, and from what I can tell by the uploads I came across (I have no contact with the Sri Lanka scenes nor would I know where to begin about finding one at the moment) they really like electronic music and metal. Those are the two most prominent genres, and they both take things to extremes. For example, the track I play in the middle of the show is off a Psytrance compilation released by the Sri Lankan label Atman Records, and that comp it's on is one of at least 20 different compilations of electronic artists, both from and outside of Sri Lanka. As for metal, the label Raavan Kommand gathers a host of black metal, death metal, and borderline harsh noise/power electronics artists from which to choose from. Quite interesting.
There's folks trying their hand at pop music, hip-hop, as well as a scattered few individuals playing everything from indie rock to folk and prog rock, and even some weirdo abstract electronic musicians. All in all, it was a fun journey through these musicians' work, and I believe I will be returning to some of these artists in the future, especially Wordsmith. I hope to come across more Sri Lankan musicians and learn more about what they have going on out there, and I wish the country the best as they mourn their lost loved ones and recover from this recent tragedy.
-A
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