Features

The Broken Promise of the Lankan Cinema:

Published

9 months ago

2025/04/29

Asoka and Swarna’s Thrilling Melodrama – Part II

“‘Dr. Ranee Sridharan,’ you say. ‘

Nice to see you again.’

The woman in the white sari places a thumb in her ledger book, adjusts her spectacles and smiles up at you. ‘You may call me Ranee. Helping you is what I am assigned to do,’ she says. ‘You have seven moons. And you have already waisted one.’”

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

by Shehan Karunatilaka (London: Sort of Books, 2022. p84)

(Continued from yesterday)

The Promise of a Multi-Ethnic National Cinema

The Colombo premiere of Broken Promise (1947) was a national event, attended by D. S. Senanayake and business leaders as it promised much – the possibility of a popular national cinema that addressed a multi-ethnic polity and a profitable business. People were bused into Kandy, where the film was screened in a large tent, and screened in several cinemas in Colombo and the suburbs. Certainly, from its inception the Lankan cinema was multi-ethnic in the composition of its creative artists (musicians, singers, actors, directors), technicians and producers, theatre and studio owners who provided the capital.

Sumathy Sivamohan’s 2018 film Sons and Fathers explored this multiethnic creative hybrid ecosystem of the industry during the 1983 pogrom against the Tamil citizens of Lanka. She modelled the musician in the film on the creative spirit of Rocksamy’s life and work so integral to the success of Lankan cinema. Sumathy researched the film by speaking to Mrs Rocksamy and incorporated a scene with her in the film. She spoke to impoverished old Tamil editors and the children of a musician to understand in some detail its multi-ethnic ecosystem and ethos of its lower-middle class creatives. She then crafted these ethnographic musical insights into an intricate poetic film.

Between Fact & Fiction: A Membrane/Skin

Sons and Fathers is a film that straddles the permeable boundaries between Documentary and Fiction films with a certain ease and confidence derived from its solid ethnographic research on the national film industry, its multi-ethnic artists and their lives. Sumathy does not proceed, as Asoka Handagama does, on the assumption that Documentary cinema is an entirely separate genre from Fictional genres. She is aware of the over one hundred-year history of Documentary cinema itself, its diversity, cross-cultural richness and its play between categories. For example, take the case of Basil Wright’s award winning ‘Poetic-Documentary’ The Song of Ceylon (1933). Lionel Wendt provided the research for this film and his tender voice-over poetic commentary, and took Kandyan drummer Suramba to London to record his sounds for the film’s ‘Devil dancing’ spirit possession ritual sequences which make the film catch fire. The film still has the power to haunt and vibrate us with its poetic cinematic intensity, the fictionalising power of its montage of sounds and images unchained from dogged documentary facts and realism.

Asoka Handagama surely must know this Lankan film history too, but tactically insists on the absolute separation between the genres of Documentary (reality), and Fiction (prabandaya), in defending Rani against strong criticism that it distorts the real lived experience of Manorani and Richard. Swarna laughingly dismissed this valid criticism as ‘Nephew and Niece criticism’, in an interview she gave in Australia, when the film was screened here in private screenings at multiplexes. But scorn and ignorance are not what we expect of senior artists of the calibre of Asoka and Swarna. They set a very bad example for the young, but perhaps young Lankans are cooler in their appraisal of such irresponsible behaviour and know it for what it is, ‘Neo-liberal ‘market-speak’.

The film Rani by Asoka Handagama presents the 1990 political assassination of the popular journalist-actor-poet Richard de Zoysa, (the ‘bi-racial’ child of a ‘mixed marriage’ between a Sinhala father and a Tamil mother), and ‘theatricalises’ or ‘dramatises’ its impact on his mother Dr Manorani Saravanamuttu, during an era of extreme political terror in the South of the country, between the UNP Government and the JVP. In naming the film Rani, Handagama appears to signal something because the ad tells us Sinhala folk that it means ‘Queen’. This metonymic displacement (a rhetorical strategy of taking a part for the whole), of the actual person’s proper name, ‘Manorani,’ into the dramatis-persona ‘Rani’, is further amplified and complicated by what Swarna Mallawarachchi has said about the character she played.

Swarna’s 28-year-old Promise

Swarna has said that she had met Manorani four times after her son’s assassination, beginning in 1996 and that she had promised her that she would tell her story and that of her son to the world. In this way she creates a certain gravitas, an ethic for her work on Rani, a sign of authenticity of a ‘true story’, testifying to a historical crime at the time of state terror and counter terror. True to her promise, she has said in recent interviews that she sustained her desire to play the role of Manorani for 28 years, at last realised in 2025 through the Indian production company LYCA’s capital.

Tamil Entrepreneurship and Sinhala Cinema

Subaskaran Allirajah, the CEO of LYCA films based in Chennai, is a Sri Lankan Tamil born in Jaffna and now a British citizen. LYCA film production is a subsidiary of a Telecommunication company for sim cards he runs from Britain. His film list includes Mani Ratnam and many major directors working across popular Tamil, Hindi and Telugu films in India, with an immediate global reach with the large Indian diaspora.

So, what sweet irony (after the violence levelled against Tamils who powered the Lankan film industry, burning the director Venkat in his car during July ‘83, but also later, with the assassination of Gunarathnam in his car, burning down of Tamil studios with Sinhala films stored therein and the proletarian movie theatres) that a Tamil business man from Jaffna has once again come to the rescue of the Sinhala cinema! As with Kadawunu Poronduwa in 1947, an Indian company, headed by a Lankan Tamil CEO has come to the rescue of a Sinhala film, with a Neo Liberal business model, kindling hope yet again for a national film industry, but this time with global dreams of access to streaming services such as NETFLIX and the like. It would appear that Lanka’s Sinhala language cinema cannot do without Tamil enterprise.

But it’s worth noting what S. Janaka Biyanwila says in his Polity essay:

‘Lyca has also been a major donor to the Conservative Party in the UK. In 2023, a French criminal court fined the company for tax fraud and money laundering. In 2024, the UK tax authorities demanded the company declare bankruptcy in order to pay overdue taxes. In 2018, LYCA acquired the EAP group in Sri Lanka with interests in media and entertainment, including television and radio channels and movie theatres. Last year (2024), the Sri Lankan government blocked LYCA from bidding for ownership shares in Sri Lanka Telecom and Lanka Hospitals.’

These monopolising moves of LYCA seeking ‘vertical integration’ of the film industry, should be front and centre even as some fans swoon over Rani and dream of a ‘quality’ Sinhala film industry revived by LYCA.

The Unconscious of the Sinhala Cinema Genealogy

(Vanshakathawe).

It is the Sinhala cinema’s unconscious, its ‘Other’ if you like, as expressed in Rani that I wish to render conscious in this piece. Let Rukmani Devi’s amaraneeya (undying) Shoka Gee (melancholy songs), and also that of Mohidin Baig’s Bhudu Gee once again cut through our sedimented Sinhala prejudices as we look back, both at our film history and its future at this critical moment.

Asoka’s Sovereign Right to ‘Self-Expression’

However, in contrast with Swarna’s promise to Manorani, Asoka Handgama says that as an artist (not a maker of documentary), he has exercised his ‘right to self-expression’ and has presented his own version of both Richard and his bereaved mother Manorani; in short, it is not a documentary, it’s fiction. It’s obvious that these two views, (on one hand, that of the actor keeping to a solemn promise to be true to what happened (through a ‘bio-pic,’ as the Head of Production, Janaki Wijerathna maintained in an interview), and on the other, that of the director expressing his own creative artistic-self), contradict each other. The film anticipates the criticism that it falsifies the biographical true story by providing a pre-emptive defence through a sentence, before the opening of the film, that it’s a work of fiction based on fact. This defensive move is part of its publicity, it anticipates controversy, provides the terms for it. I wish to side step this dynamic and shift the critical terrain, which is the professional task I set myself as a film theorist and scholar.

The actress and the director seem to have two different understandings of their intentions and what it is that they have done. Swarna then obfuscates matters further by saying, ‘film is a director’s medium and as an actor my work is to follow his wishes’. But Asoka has said that Swarna brought this project to him when LYCA came up with the money and he wrote it within 3 months with her in mind. It was not a film he had wanted to make, he said. He appears to have written a skeletal generic structure for Swarna to embody as she wishes, in her familiar high intensity, award winning mode of performance.

To Eat the Cake and Have It

To put it differently, they want to both ‘eat their cake and have it,’ which is of course very good PR for the box office success of the film. ‘Eating the cake’ implies maximising and gratifying their own pleasure as artists, and ‘having it’ as in keeping the cake intact, means that the names of the historical mother and son are used as a strong historical referent both within the film and in its PR, but get distorted when it gets in the way of the artists’ own ‘self-expression’ and self-gratification. That there is an ethical dilemma here, as many have pointed out, is a point I wish to explore further by theorising the aesthetics of the film. The invective one hears goes nowhere intellectually, but just feeds the publicity machine. Controversy is very good for promoting a film, creates a buzz, people want to see what all the fuss and excitement is about.

The exceptional box office success of the film is no doubt also linked to Swarna Mallawarachchi’s stature as a serious actress with a proven track record of award- winning work with some of Lanka’s main auteurs. And in being identified with Rani as Queen, at least one critic announced that Swarna is now a ‘golden super-star’. The logic of such hyperbolic marketing is of interest to me as a film scholar studying the public reception of films within the robust subfield of ‘Reception Studies’ and the kind of ‘public-spheres’ that competing discourses on a film generates, now especially, within a digitally powered virtual mediascape which is our democratic ‘commons’.

As well, importantly Asoka Handagama is one of Lanka’s major playwrights and an unusual modern filmmaker in that he has developed an idiom of his own, with a distinguished body of work which in turn has created an educated cine-literate audience who followed it keenly over a significant period of time. Therefore, Lankans are eager to see Swarna and Asoka present Dr. Manorani Saravanamuttu and Richard de Zoysa, a mother who was a Tamil professional woman and single parent and her very well-known and loved son, a journalist, actor and poet from the Lankan Anglophile upper-middle class, caught up in the extraordinary violence in the South, of the 1987-1990 era of extra-parliamentary politics of our island nation.

Political Theatre

The other draw card is the explicitly political representation of key political figures of the era represented by actors resembling the politician more or less. A thrilling novelty, it makes it structurally possible for Asoka to sketch the drama of the mother and son within the real-politic of the Premadasa era and even dramatize the bomb blast by the LTTE suicide bomber on a bicycle, which annihilated the president and others. LYCA’s Indian currency would have helped in staging the blast, as such destruction requires lots of money to execute with even a little credibility. This effort by Asoka is, in my opinion, a ‘third-world’ example because stage destruction, which cinema has perfected for profit in the genre of ‘Disaster movies’, requires much more than was available. He was pandering I feel to our desire to see President Premadasa being blown up, along with the senior cop who Manorani unequivocally identified as the one who arrived with lumpen thugs to her house, to abduct Richard, to torture and kill him according to, as widely believed, the President’s command.

This kind of violence, staged to excite and thrill, is the very stuff melodrama feeds on. The sonic ‘reverberation’ technically added to the sound of the abductors crashing into Richard’s house amplifies the melodramatic tension and suspense. In contrast, the three firm taps on the infamous heavy-wood teak Jaffna door, in Sumathy’s A Single Tumbler, chills the sensorium of the viewer, where fear and thought commingle as one quiet voice ‘signifying the boys’ announce their intent to take the son away for questioning. In contrast, Melodrama disarms our thought processes as it works with orchestrating (with loud sound and manic editing), suspense and thrilling action, its raison d’etre. This is the source of its global attraction and popularity as a genre.

(To be continued)

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Features

Rebuilding the country requires consultation

Published

34 mins ago

2026/01/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

A positive feature of the government that is emerging is its responsiveness to public opinion. The manner in which it has been responding to the furore over the Grade 6 English Reader, in which a weblink to a gay dating site was inserted, has been constructive. Government leaders have taken pains to explain the mishap and reassure everyone concerned that it was not meant to be there and would be removed. They have been meeting religious prelates, educationists and community leaders. In a context where public trust in institutions has been badly eroded over many years, such responsiveness matters. It signals that the government sees itself as accountable to society, including to parents, teachers, and those concerned about the values transmitted through the school system.

This incident also appears to have strengthened unity within the government. The attempt by some opposition politicians and gender misogynists to pin responsibility for this lapse on Prime Minister Dr Harini Amarasuriya, who is also the Minister of Education, has prompted other senior members of the government to come to her defence. This is contrary to speculation that the powerful JVP component of the government is unhappy with the prime minister. More importantly, it demonstrates an understanding within the government that individual ministers should not be scapegoated for systemic shortcomings. Effective governance depends on collective responsibility and solidarity within the leadership, especially during moments of public controversy.

The continuing important role of the prime minister in the government is evident in her meetings with international dignitaries and also in addressing the general public. Last week she chaired the inaugural meeting of the Presidential Task Force to Rebuild Sri Lanka in the aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah. The composition of the task force once again reflects the responsiveness of the government to public opinion. Unlike previous mechanisms set up by governments, which were either all male or without ethnic minority representation, this one includes both, and also includes civil society representation. Decision-making bodies in which there is diversity are more likely to command public legitimacy.

Task Force

The Presidential Task Force to Rebuild Sri Lanka overlooks eight committees to manage different aspects of the recovery, each headed by a sector minister. These committees will focus on Needs Assessment, Restoration of Public Infrastructure, Housing, Local Economies and Livelihoods, Social Infrastructure, Finance and Funding, Data and Information Systems, and Public Communication. This structure appears comprehensive and well designed. However, experience from post-disaster reconstruction in countries such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami suggests that institutional design alone does not guarantee success. What matters equally is how far these committees engage with those on the ground and remain open to feedback that may complicate, slow down, or even challenge initial plans.

An option that the task force might wish to consider is to develop a linkage with civil society groups with expertise in the areas that the task force is expected to work. The CSO Collective for Emergency Relief has set up several committees that could be linked to the committees supervised by the task force. Such linkages would not weaken the government’s authority but strengthen it by grounding policy in lived realities. Recent findings emphasise the idea of “co-production”, where state and society jointly shape solutions in which sustainable outcomes often emerge when communities are treated not as passive beneficiaries but as partners in problem-solving.

Cyclone Ditwah destroyed more than physical infrastructure. It also destroyed communities. Some were swallowed by landslides and floods, while many others will need to be moved from their homes as they live in areas vulnerable to future disasters. The trauma of displacement is not merely material but social and psychological. Moving communities to new locations requires careful planning. It is not simply a matter of providing people with houses. They need to be relocated to locations and in a manner that permits communities to live together and to have livelihoods. This will require consultation with those who are displaced. Post-disaster evaluations have acknowledged that relocation schemes imposed without community consent often fail, leading to abandonment of new settlements or the emergence of new forms of marginalisation. Even today, abandoned tsunami housing is to be seen in various places that were affected by the 2004 tsunami.

Malaiyaha Tamils

The large-scale reconstruction that needs to take place in parts of the country most severely affected by Cyclone Ditwah also brings an opportunity to deal with the special problems of the Malaiyaha Tamil population. These are people of recent Indian origin who were unjustly treated at the time of Independence and denied rights of citizenship such as land ownership and the vote. This has been a festering problem and a blot on the conscience of the country. The need to resettle people living in those parts of the hill country which are vulnerable to landslides is an opportunity to do justice by the Malaiyaha Tamil community. Technocratic solutions such as high-rise apartments or English-style townhouses that have or are being contemplated may be cost-effective, but may also be culturally inappropriate and socially disruptive. The task is not simply to build houses but to rebuild communities.

The resettlement of people who have lost their homes and communities requires consultation with them. In the same manner, the education reform programme, of which the textbook controversy is only a small part, too needs to be discussed with concerned stakeholders including school teachers and university faculty. Opening up for discussion does not mean giving up one’s own position or values. Rather, it means recognising that better solutions emerge when different perspectives are heard and negotiated. Consultation takes time and can be frustrating, particularly in contexts of crisis where pressure for quick results is intense. However, solutions developed with stakeholder participation are more resilient and less costly in the long run.

Rebuilding after Cyclone Ditwah, addressing historical injustices faced by the Malaiyaha Tamil community, advancing education reform, changing the electoral system to hold provincial elections without further delay and other challenges facing the government, including national reconciliation, all require dialogue across differences and patience with disagreement. Opening up for discussion is not to give up on one’s own position or values, but to listen, to learn, and to arrive at solutions that have wider acceptance. Consultation needs to be treated as an investment in sustainability and legitimacy and not as an obstacle to rapid decisionmaking. Addressing the problems together, especially engagement with affected parties and those who work with them, offers the best chance of rebuilding not only physical infrastructure but also trust between the government and people in the year ahead.

by Jehan Perera

Features

PSTA: Terrorism without terror continues

Published

36 mins ago

2026/01/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

When the government appointed a committee, led by Rienzie Arsekularatne, Senior President’s Counsel, to draft a new law to replace the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), as promised by the ruling NPP, the writer, in an article published in this journal in July 2025, expressed optimism that, given Arsekularatne’s experience in criminal justice, he would be able to address issues from the perspectives of the State, criminal justice, human rights, suspects, accused, activists, and victims. The draft Protection of the State from Terrorism Act (PSTA), produced by the Committee, has been sharply criticised by individuals and organisations who expected a better outcome that aligns with modern criminal justice and human rights principles.

This article is limited to a discussion of the definition of terrorism. As the writer explained previously, the dangers of an overly broad definition go beyond conviction and increased punishment. Special laws on terrorism allow deviations from standard laws in areas such as preventive detention, arrest, administrative detention, restrictions on judicial decisions regarding bail, lengthy pre-trial detention, the use of confessions, superadded punishments, such as confiscation of property and cancellation of professional licences, banning organisations, and restrictions on publications, among others. The misuse of such laws is not uncommon. Drastic legislation, such as the PTA and emergency regulations, although intended to be used to curb intense violence and deal with emergencies, has been exploited to suppress political opposition.

International Standards

The writer’s basic premise is that, for an act to come within the definition of terrorism, it must either involve “terror” or a “state of intense or overwhelming fear” or be committed to achieve an objective of an individual or organisation that uses “terror” or a “state of intense or overwhelming fear” to realise its aims. The UN General Assembly has accepted that the threshold for a possible general offence of terrorism is the provocation of “a state of terror” (Resolution 60/43). The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has taken a similar view, using the phrase “to create a climate of terror.”

In his 2023 report on the implementation of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, the Secretary-General warned that vague and overly broad definitions of terrorism in domestic law, often lacking adequate safeguards, violate the principle of legality under international human rights law. He noted that such laws lead to heavy-handed, ineffective, and counterproductive counter-terrorism practices and are frequently misused to target civil society actors and human rights defenders by labelling them as terrorists to obstruct their work.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has stressed in its Handbook on Criminal Justice Responses to Terrorism that definitions of terrorist acts must use precise and unambiguous language, narrowly define punishable conduct and clearly distinguish it from non-punishable behaviour or offences subject to other penalties. The handbook was developed over several months by a team of international experts, including the writer, and was finalised at a workshop in Vienna.

Anti-Terrorism Bill, 2023

A five-member Bench of the Supreme Court that examined the Anti-Terrorism Bill, 2023, agreed with the petitioners that the definition of terrorism in the Bill was too broad and infringed Article 12(1) of the Constitution, and recommended that an exemption (“carve out”) similar to that used in New Zealand under which “the fact that a person engages in any protest, advocacy, or dissent, or engages in any strike, lockout, or other industrial action, is not, by itself, a sufficient basis for inferring that the person” committed the wrongful acts that would otherwise constitute terrorism.

While recognising the Court’s finding that the definition was too broad, the writer argued, in his previous article, that the political, administrative, and law enforcement cultures of the country concerned are crucial factors to consider. Countries such as New Zealand are well ahead of developing nations, where the risk of misuse is higher, and, therefore, definitions should be narrower, with broader and more precise exemptions. How such a “carve out” would play out in practice is uncertain.

In the Supreme Court, it was submitted that for an act to constitute an offence, under a special law on terrorism, there must be terror unleashed in the commission of the act, or it must be carried out in pursuance of the object of an organisation that uses terror to achieve its objectives. In general, only acts that aim at creating “terror” or a “state of intense or overwhelming fear” should come under the definition of terrorism. There can be terrorism-related acts without violence, for example, when a member of an extremist organisation remotely sabotages an electronic, automated or computerised system in pursuance of the organisation’s goal. But when the same act is committed by, say, a whizz-kid without such a connection, that would be illegal and should be punished, but not under a special law on terrorism. In its determination of the Bill, the Court did not address this submission.

PSTA Proposal

Proposed section 3(1) of the PSTA reads:

Any person who, intentionally or knowingly, commits any act which causes a consequence specified in subsection (2), for the purpose of-

(a) provoking a state of terror;

(b) intimidating the public or any section of the public;

(c) compelling the Government of Sri Lanka, or any other Government, or an international organisation, to do or to abstain from doing any act; or

(d) propagating war, or violating territorial integrity or infringing the sovereignty of Sri Lanka or any other sovereign country, commits the offence of terrorism.

The consequences listed in sub-section (2) include: death; hurt; hostage-taking; abduction or kidnapping; serious damage to any place of public use, any public property, any public or private transportation system or any infrastructure facility or environment; robbery, extortion or theft of public or private property; serious risk to the health and safety of the public or a section of the public; serious obstruction or damage to, or interference with, any electronic or automated or computerised system or network or cyber environment of domains assigned to, or websites registered with such domains assigned to Sri Lanka; destruction of, or serious damage to, religious or cultural property; serious obstruction or damage to, or interference with any electronic, analogue, digital or other wire-linked or wireless transmission system, including signal transmission and any other frequency-based transmission system; without lawful authority, importing, exporting, manufacturing, collecting, obtaining, supplying, trafficking, possessing or using firearms, offensive weapons, ammunition, explosives, articles or things used in the manufacture of explosives or combustible or corrosive substances and biological, chemical, electric, electronic or nuclear weapons, other nuclear explosive devices, nuclear material, radioactive substances, or radiation-emitting devices.

Under section 3(5), “any person who commits an act which constitutes an offence under the nine international treaties on terrorism, ratified by Sri Lanka, also commits the offence of terrorism.” No one would contest that.

The New Zealand “carve-out” is found in sub-section (4): “The fact that a person engages in any protest, advocacy or dissent or engages in any strike, lockout or other industrial action, is not by itself a sufficient basis for inferring that such person (a) commits or attempts, abets, conspires, or prepares to commit the act with the intention or knowledge specified in subsection (1); or (b) is intending to cause or knowingly causes an outcome specified in subsection (2).”

While the Arsekularatne Committee has proposed, including the New Zealand “carve out”, it has ignored a crucial qualification in section 5(2) of that country’s Terrorism Suppression Act, that for an act to be considered a terrorist act, it must be carried out for one or more purposes that are or include advancing “an ideological, political, or religious cause”, with the intention of either intimidating a population or coercing or forcing a government or an international organisation to do or abstain from doing any act.

When the Committee was appointed, the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka opined that any new offence with respect to “terrorism” should contain a specific and narrow definition of terrorism, such as the following: “Any person who by the use of force or violence unlawfully targets the civilian population or a segment of the civilian population with the intent to spread fear among such population or segment thereof in furtherance of a political, ideological, or religious cause commits the offence of terrorism”.

The writer submits that, rather than bringing in the requirement of “a political, ideological, or religious cause”, it would be prudent to qualify proposed section 3(1) by the requirement that only acts that aim at creating “terror” or a “state of intense or overwhelming fear” or are carried out to achieve a goal of an individual or organisation that employs “terror” or a “state of intense or overwhelming fear” to attain its objectives should come under the definition of terrorism. Such a threshold is recognised internationally; no “carve out” is then needed, and the concerns of the Human Rights Commission would also be addressed.

by Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne
President’s Counsel

Features

ROCK meets REGGAE 2026

Published

37 mins ago

2026/01/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

JAYASRI: From Vienna, Austria

We generally have in our midst the famous JAYASRI twins, Rohitha and Rohan, who are based in Austria but make it a point to entertain their fans in Sri Lanka on a regular basis.

Well, rock and reggae fans get ready for a major happening on 28th February (Oops, a special day where I’m concerned!) as the much-awaited ROCK meets REGGAE event booms into action at the Nelum Pokuna outdoor theatre.

It was seven years ago, in 2019, that the last ROCK meets REGGAE concert was held in Colombo, and then the Covid scene cropped up.

Chitral Somapala with BLACK MAJESTY

This year’s event will feature our rock star Chitral Somapala with the Australian Rock+Metal band BLACK MAJESTY, and the reggae twins Rohitha and Rohan Jayalath with the original JAYASRI – the full band, with seven members from Vienna, Austria.

According to Rohitha, the JAYASRI outfit is enthusiastically looking forward to entertaining music lovers here with their brand of music.

Their playlist for 28th February will consist of the songs they do at festivals in Europe, as well as originals, and also English and Sinhala hits, and selected covers.

Says Rohitha: “We have put up a great team, here in Sri Lanka, to give this event an international setting and maintain high standards, and this will be a great experience for our Sri Lankan music lovers … not only for Rock and Reggae fans. Yes, there will be some opening acts, and many surprises, as well.”

Rohitha, Chitral and Rohan: Big scene at ROCK meets REGGAE

Rohitha and Rohan also conveyed their love and festive blessings to everyone in Sri Lanka, stating “This Christmas was different as our country faced a catastrophic situation and, indeed, it’s a great time to help and share the real love of Jesus Christ by helping the poor, the needy and the homeless people. Let’s RISE UP as a great nation in 2026.”