Myfirst exposure to music was from listening to a Telefunken, my family’s only radio with buttons and dials. A perfect German-made beast that sat in the middle of our family living room. It operated on batteries before my neighbourhood was connected to the electricity grid.
There was only one broadcaster in Sri Lanka, the state-owned broadcasting authority. Channels were few. AM and Short Wave were the frequencies used. There were no FM or digital radio channels then.
My father listened to the news on the radio regularly. The rest of the time, we listened to music from it. I did not listen to Sri Lankan music much. I liked Hindi music from Bollywood movies which were beamed to Sri Lanka from India. In between, I listened to English music. One could pick short wave signals from BBC on a good day, with some disturbance. That was good enough for me.
I was more of a fan of contemporary English pop music from the early seventies. So I bought a Sony Radio, which became my companion. I fell asleep to my music. My father checked on his children before retiring to bed himself and turned my radio off every night after I had fallen asleep.
Soon after, when I started working, I wanted a stereo badly. In a country where imports were restricted, they were costly. Stereos were considered luxury items. It was equivalent to about ten months of my pay. It was an impossible dream to buy one.
When I landed in Dubai a few short years later, a stereo was the first thing I set my eyes on. I bought one with my first week’s pay. What an achievement! I was so proud of myself. I had arrived. It was a National Panasonic stereo with an FM radio and a cassette player.
Long after, I started making mixtapes, buying some on my own, and borrowing cassettes from my friends while living in Dubai. I became so good at it that many friends got me to make mixtapes for them. Every day after a full day’s work at the bank, I came home, lay on the ground at my apartment, and got to work experimenting with music selections. It was one of my past times. I’d make them and write each song’s title and the singer's name with a felt pen on each tape. My friends tell me that I made legendary selections for them back then.
See the row of mixtapes on the floor, bottom right.
Back in the day, there were no international phone calls between families. Necessity is the mother of invention. I recorded my news and whereabouts with my voice on cassettes and posted them to my parents in Sri Lanka. They listened to my voice after a two-week gap, the time taken in transit in postage. It was my podcast to my family. It was better than writing letters. I did write letters to them, though. Regularly every week, numbering each one sequentially. I wrote 300 of them in all to my parents and kid brother.
Let us come back to my mixtape story. Here are the songs that were my all-time favourites from the seventies. If I were to make a mixtape today, picking one song from each singer and each band from that bygone era, this would be my favourite selection.
Come to think of it, my music taste was weird — no particular genre. Funks, Soul, R&B, Rock, Disco, and everything else were there among them.
I was never the property of Playboy Inc despite my T-shirt.
My all-time favourite bands are Santana and Bee Gees from the seventies, the era of free love, sexual awakening and bell bottoms. I rate them equally at the top of my favourite bands. Santana rocked the music world, revolutionising music. Which lad in the seventies did not love music from Bee Gees? Eventually, from a melody band, they became a disco band. Bee Gees were originally from Bondi, Australia, my country now.
Then there was David Bowie, the first star who turned sexuality on its head and was admired by many teenagers. At seventeen, I bought a recycled pop magazine, only to pull out its centrefold of Ziggy Stardust. The poster adorned my bedroom wall in my parent’s home in Sri Lanka, where I grew up.
Among the remaining bands I loved are Jackson Five, Abba, Led Zepplin, Queen, Rolling Stones and The Who.
I still reminisce about my first radio, bought for Rupees 210 (equivalent to $40, back in the day) while still a schoolboy from Seidles Cineradio, the distributor for Sony. It was made in Sri Lanka in partnership with Sony. It was the most valued asset I had at the time.
I still have a music device by my bedside nearly er. It is quite different now; my smart speaker can stream music and recognise my voice. I have so many choices now, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Spotify, Podcasts, YouTube Music, TuneIn, SoundCloud, and many Internet-only radio channels to listen to on-demand. I have Bose sound-cancelling headphones as I walk my 12,000 steps a day. Over 1000 songs are stored on my phone. I stream music via my Sonos sound system everywhere in the house. Thanks to Google, I still fall asleep to music on my bedside speaker, which automatically turns off after I fall asleep. From an original base of about a maximum of 50 songs, I can now access 100 million songs. I am now spoilt for choice.
You recorded lot of songs for me on tapes in early eighties. Some instrumentals from one of my favourites, Anthony Ventura and pop from 60/70s. I was listening to them for a long time and gave those to someone who really valued them.
Cyril Stanley A story of gratitude — Denzil recalls a friend who looked out for him in his budding years in Sri Lanka Denzil Jayasinghe 11 min read · Aug 27, 2022 1 Give us a bit of background on how you met Cyril. It was the seventies in the sleepy village of Dalugama , my ancestral hometown, some ten kilometres from Colombo. With their flared bell bottoms and Afro-style hair, it was easy to notice Cyril and his younger brother Edward. I’d bump into the duo in the neighbourhood as I walked home after a day at college. A casual hello greeting turned into a conversation and an evolving friendship with the duo at an age when making friends was effortless. However, it was Cyril who reached out to me first. What did the brothers look like? C yril was a younger version of Smokey Robinson and his brother, Edward, a junior Lionel Richie but darker. Both had curly hair, grown long, copying the Afro-American idols of the seventies. Smokey Robinson, Cyril Stanley lookalike Where did they
My experiences of rebellions How waves of violence in Sri Lanka broke a young man’s heart Warning — Distressing scenes described in this story. A YOUTH INSURRECTION DURING MY BOYHOOD 1971 — There was a strong student and youth socialist movement styled on the “Che Guevara” clique. Many poor, unemployed and underprivileged young people joined this movement. My two elder cousins, my father’s brother’s children, Sisira and Marie, were also in this rebel group. In their home. They replaced Jesus’s picture with that of Mao Zedong and Che Guevara. Both of them, teenagers, boldly spoke about a future socialist society. A society in which everyone was equal in Sri Lanka. Young as I was, it was a bit gibberish to me. In April 1971, the movement turned violent. The insurrection began when the rebels started attacking police stations. The Sri Lankan government responded by deploying armed forces with brutal force. Rebels cut power lines and blocked roads with trees in the countryside. Schools wer
A Child of Curiosity How inherent inquisitiveness became a key driver in learning experiences. Denzil Jayasinghe · B orn in the mid-20th century, I am a product of the post-World War II era. My parents, who were teenagers when the war commenced, married in the 1950s. As a representative of the baby boomer generation, I was born under the astrological sign of Capricorn, the tenth sign of the zodiac. My birth took place at Zoysa Nursing Home, a renowned institution in Colombo, Sri Lanka, around 5 in the morning. Sri Lanka, known for its tropical climate, is a beautiful island nation south of India. This climate appealed to me, and I sought similar weather in my twenties, spending them in Dubai, where the winter resembles an Australian summer. Raised by religious parents, I held them in deep affection. However, the church teachings posed a paradox for a young mind, instructing one to love God more than one’s parents. I initially adhered to the Ten Commandments and other societal norms in
6 min read·May 27, 2021
You recorded lot of songs for me on tapes in early eighties. Some instrumentals from one of my favourites, Anthony Ventura and pop from 60/70s. I was listening to them for a long time and gave those to someone who really valued them.
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear. I hope I can see my handwritings on tape them when I painstakingly labelled each song in tiny letters by hand
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