Latha Walpola: High-pitched singer Latha lowers her voice to rest

Music plays a defining part in a nation's history.

- Gamini Akmeemana

There are those singers who become representative of a given country's musical culture. Latha Walpola, alongside great contemporaries such as Rukmani Devi, Sunil Shantha, Č.T. Fernando, Sujatha Aththanayake, H.R. Jothipala, Milton Perera, Mohideen Baig, W. D. Amaradeva, Milton Mallawaarachchi, Haroon Lanthra, Indrani Perera, and Latha's late husband Dharmadasa Walpola, was a towering figure who defined the playback song in Sinhala film music for half a century, together with her great rival the late Angelene Gunathilake.

It's very sad that almost the entire generation of singers, musicians and composers we grew up with are now gone. But we have the music, films and the songs to listen to, watch and discuss.

Latha Walpola (nee Rita Genevieve Fernando) was born in Bambalapitiya in 1933 to a Catholic family. Her mother, a Convent school teacher, recognised her daughter's genius and helped her all along. Like many of our singers from Christian backgrounds, she had the benefit of church music/choir singing as a child. But, as far as we know, she had no formal training in music.

This fact is remarkable. She did not come from the Eastern Baathkande music tradition which nurtured many of these pioneer singers (against which Sunil Shantha rebelled alone as a radio artiste, and was penalised for that audacity). It maybe that the historical necessity of a newly independent nation looking for its cultural identity dictated this narrative of raw talent fashioned by inner discipline and pure instinct, and created a voice that was exactly right for what needed to be done.

This was too, the era of great singer partnerships Sisira and Indrani Senaratne, P.L.A. and Chithra Somapala, Latha and Dharmadasa and, later, Rukmani-Neville Fernando. If we look at the Latha-Dharmadasa partnership which lasted three decades until his untimely death in 1983, and listen to any of their duets, we notice something remarkable about the dynamics.