Features

A Nanda Malini Baby

Published

3 weeks ago

2026/08/30

Thilina Walpola

by Janaka Samarakoon

I learnt music with her, by listening to what she did with it. I learnt poetry with her, by deciphering the lyrics she sang. I became aware of politics, of class, of injustice, by turning over and over what that voice was telling me – so gentle a voice, though not always, for she knew how to turn hard when the stakes rose above art and beauty.

And in the end, it was through her that I began to open up to the world. I was five then, or perhaps eight. It went on until I was 17-years old, 19 maybe. She was my spiritual mother. She was my first Sinhala teacher. She was my imagined mentor. She was my favourite singer. She is Nanda Malini. She is no more.

It was thanks to my sister that I discovered first the beauty of her music, and then its power. My sister is 10 years older than I am, which meant that, as a child, I had the privilege of reading her books and listening to her music a decade earlier than I otherwise might have. I struck lucky, and I struck lucky young.

We were living in that remote village near Kurunegala. Five kilometres from town and an hour away: twenty minutes on foot along a beaten-earth track, then cooling our heels at the bus stop, and finally the bus itself, which rarely speeded much above walking pace – when there was a bus at all.

We had no electricity. We had a black-and-white television run off a car battery, which we were allowed to watch for about an hour a day, between eight and nine in the evening; that was prime time: the news and the evening serial. And we had a “radio-cassette recorder” – the name we gave those little black-and-silver boxes, with their tiny speakers set into the front, which seemed to us then the absolute pinnacle of technological sophistication.

I remember what came next very clearly, because its irony became a kind of private mythology. I did not first fall in love with Nanda Malini’s music over the FM airwaves – there was no FM then, only AM – nor through a cassette. It began with a booklet. There had long been in our house a very old radio set, with ivory-coloured buttons picked out in glossy jet black. Like the keys of a piano, I would think years later, when I finally saw one. But when I was smaller still, that antique object had already been out of order for months, perhaps years. Time was elastic then; I have no way of measuring it now. For all that time, we were deprived of music.

Then one day Father came home with a small National Panasonic “radio-cassette recorder” tucked under his arm. For the household, its arrival was an epiphany. The precious equipment was immediately installed in the most eminent place in our drawing room, beside the television set, for a radio-cassette recorder ranks immediately below a television, does it not?

We had just one cassette to play on our precious “radio-cassette recorder”, because the friend from whom Father had bought the second-hand machine had, by some stroke of luck, left one inside. A sort of bonus. I learnt later that he owned two copies of the same recording and had been only too happy to part with the spare. The cassette was labeled Yaathra. Its cover bore a beautiful photograph – very arty, I would say now in retrospect; more arty than artistic – of a woman dressed in white, seated in an oruwa, a yaathra, floating on water abounding with lilies, in a scene that might have come straight out of Monet, delicately holding, though not actually playing, a sitar. I remember catching sight, at the friend’s house, of an enormous poster bearing the same image.

My sister played the cassette over and over, until one day the tape jammed in the machine; in trying to pull it free, we stripped out the magnetic ribbon and destroyed everything it held. It was not, however, the music on that cassette that first struck me. There had also been a booklet with the radio. One might almost say that the machine was a kind of Nanda Malini Trojan horse – which gives some idea of how prominent she already was. She was only in her early forties, yet already, alongside W. D. Amaradeva, one of the foremost singers of her generation.

The booklet was entitled Hemanthayedi. It was an exquisitely produced collector’s piece: fine paper, meticulous printing, a title cut into the cover in beautiful calligraphy, the letters opening like tiny windows through the paper, and the songs laid out with equal elegance across the pages.

For reasons I cannot quite explain, I fell in love with that little book. I pored over it endlessly. I learnt all the poems – all the songs, as I would later find out – by heart. And because I had never actually heard them sung, I invented melodies for them myself. Only later did I understand that the booklet was the official companion to another album by the famous singer whose cassette we had briefly possessed.

One anecdote in particular stays with me. I was playing a musical game with my cousins. Each of us had a fixed number of seconds – 30, perhaps – to sing a song. When time ran out, we had to stop dead, even if that left us stranded in the middle of a line, or even a word. The next contestant then had five seconds or so to come up with another song
beginning with the letter on which the previous singer had been cut off.

At these family contests, I would triumphantly produce songs from my precious booklet, set to melodies of my own invention. Everyone would stare at me. What on earth were these strange songs the boy was muttering? Nobody recognized them – and naturally they recognized the tunes even less, since I had made those up myself. They declared them invalid. I protested that they were not. But I had no proof.

I remember one aunt in particular becoming irritated when she heard me singing one of the texts, which mentioned virginity – the song, I believe, was Kumari Bambasara. From her reaction, you would have thought I had uttered an obscenity.

By now I had become a die-hard Nanda Malini fan. I had hardly listened to any of her songs, but I knew at least 12 of them by heart. Then came Pawana. It was a musical whirlwind. By then, Nanda Malini had become far more uncompromising. The concert, which travelled across the island, was an act of resistance. She sang against injustice, racial hatred and class discrimination, and in the process saw some of her songs banned from public broadcast. Attending Pawana became almost an act of civic responsibility, and audiences came out galvanized.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Honoured assembly,
do not let the beauty of my singing lull you.
Listen – and remain alert.
On those rickety chairs, amid the heat and sweat,
sit steadfast, unflinching.
For what I sing are not songs.
They are the cries of lament
of thousands of oppressed hearts.
[free translation]

I never managed to attend Pawana, even though Nanda Malini came several times to the Kurunegala Town Hall – our own ramshackle opera house, furnished with precisely those “rickety chairs” and ruled by that same “heat and sweat”.

But I did something else. I must have been about 10. At the time, we schoolchildren were given an allowance – actual money! – by the central government to cover the cost of lunch. The scheme had gone through various incarnations: at one point an egg bun, then a bowl of soup, and now cash. I, however, went to school every morning with a lunchbox prepared by Mother, so I never had to spend a rupee of my allowance on food.

And, frankly, there was not much to spend it on in the pre-consumerist world of my childhood. No fancy phones, no earbuds or headphones, no games consoles. What could I possibly have bought from the pavement vendors of Kurunegala village-city? So I saved the money. And when it had grown into what seemed to me a small fortune – precisely 60 rupees – I bought myself the first thing I had ever paid for with money of my own: the two- cassette album of Pawana. It was a beautiful object: two cassettes nestled inside a finely made paper box the size of a paperback, with a beautiful photograph of the singer sitting cross-legged in her perennial white attire, singing as though praying to invisible powers she was calling upon to protect our island, end its war and right its injustices.

I would listen to my prized possession with the same fervour that a Western teenager my age might have listened to Nirvana. Full volume, screaming the words along with the performer, waving my arms, imploring the Buddha, the divinities, whatever power the incantation seemed to invoke. I am no Walt Disney baby. I am no Jackson Five baby. I am no Nirvana baby, no Doors baby. I had access to none of those pre-globalisation idols. I am a Nanda Malini baby.

The first “paper” I ever wrote – I put the word in quotation marks because, at 15, I fully intended it in the loftiest academic sense – was also about Nanda Malini. By then I had left Kurunegala for Kandy and somehow managed to get into a fancy school for rich kids. Within my first few days there, I had the audacity to submit a piece to the school journal. It was about Nanda Malini’s activism and about the new genre she had, to my adolescent mind, almost single-handedly established within Sinhala culture: wirodhaakalpa gee, “songs of resistance”. Today, I would probably count this particular body of her work among her weakest. At 15, however, I was intoxicated by those not terribly subtle lyrics and by the emphatic, unmistakably local rhythms that drove them.

One humiliation from that episode remains particularly vivid. I had misspelt – out of sheer ignorance, not through a slip of the pen – the very Sinhala term my “paper” was meant to defend and promote. My loyal friend Lohan Gunaweera discreetly suggested that perhaps I ought to use the correct word and, with exquisite tact, whispered it to me.

The article appeared in the school journal and immediately secured me a certain standing within the school community as a Nanda Malini expert. I am still sometimes considered one. I am not. I did, however, once meet the Grande Dame of Sinhala song.

She came to our school, the same fancy rich-kids’ school, set on a picturesque hill above the Kandy Lake, for a shoot. It was a new single, released by the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation, on the virtues of being a good patriot or some equally edifying notion. She spent a whole afternoon and evening with us – the scene was to be filmed at night – while
the crew set up the entire rigmarole such a super-production requires. and, as the uncontested Nanda Malini specialist, I was deputed to stay all of that time at her side.

I was like a Delphic priestess suddenly admitted into the presence of Apollo. Or a 15- year-old Titanic fan catching sight of Leonardo DiCaprio on the red carpet. Awestruck to tears, I was far more concerned with her physical comfort (Do you need water? What about tea? Are you hungry, Ma’am? A biscuit? A plantain? A bun? There are excellent buns down the hill, I can fetch you one…) than with discussing music with her.

I remember telling her repeatedly how much I loved her – how much I loved her music and, above all, how much I loved her. My feelings were somewhat confused at that age. Then, in a fit of adolescent devotion, I decided to give her something. A friend of mine had carved a tiny statuette with his penknife that very day and, for some reason, had given it to me. It was a clenched fist, brandished. I prized it enormously and had owned it for only a few hours. And I gave it to her. I can still remember, almost word for word, the solemn little speech with which I presented it:

“I know how insignificant I am, and how insignificant this statuette is, but this is all I have, Ma’am. If you accept it, you will make me the happiest boy on earth. Please keep it.” I handed it over ceremoniously, with both hands. She accepted the “award.” And, come to think of it, that raised fist might indeed have made a rather magnificent award if enlarged and cast in some precious metal.

Then we went down to the film set. I was one of perhaps a hundred schoolchildren used as extras in a scene filmed with camera cranes. If that music video still exists somewhere, I must be in it.

From that day on, whenever I saw a photograph taken inside her home, the famous Music Ashramaya, I would instinctively scan the shelves for my tiny two-centimetre statuette among her many trophies, convinced that she had kept my gift in her cabinet. I never spotted it in any of them; the photographs were simply never sharp enough to reveal something so small.

A few months later, we invited her to our school and, during our annual literary festival, Kala Ulela, presented her with a lifetime achievement award. She was gracious enough to accept our invitation and came to Kandy for the second time that year. The idea of honouring her had been mine, and no one had objected to the choice of so prominent an artist. I also had the privilege of writing the citation that was read out as the chief guest presented her with the award. In 1998, I must have been the happiest citation-writer alive – even if the text itself, written in a state of pure awe, and now seemingly lost, was probably about as subtle as Nanda Malini’s protest songs at their most strident. That day, I had to resist with all my might the temptation to ask what had become of my little statuette.
I still have not seen the Disney classics. I am still a Star Wars virgin. I cannot sing a single Michael Jackson line by heart. Perhaps that is as it should be. I was a Nanda Malini baby. And today, I am an orphan.

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Features

Defend civic space upon which peace is built

Published

20 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Jehan Perera

International Peace Day was observed on 21 September. It finds Sri Lanka with a genuine achievement to record and a demanding test to meet. The UN’s theme this year was “Invest in Peace: For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day.” It also honoured the “everyday architects of peace”—people driving local action and building a lasting peace from the ground up. In the 2026 Global Peace Index, Sri Lanka rose 30 places, from 97th to 67th among 163 countries. Over the same period, global peacefulness declined for the twelfth consecutive year to its lowest level since the index began, and South Asia suffered the sharpest regional deterioration. The test is whether the government will protect the civic space in which those architects of peace work.

Sri Lanka’s improvement is real and deserves acknowledgement. In this year’s review, issued a few weeks ago, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights acknowledged progress in the form of action against corruption, arrests and investigations linked to political killings, enforced disappearances and the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, and continued official denunciation of racism. A ranking, however, records conditions at a particular moment. It does not guarantee that they will last. Sustainable peace will depend on three factors. These are whether the government addresses the unresolved causes of conflict, whether it strengthens accountability for past and present abuses, and whether it protects the civic space in which peace is built from below. On the first two the record is incomplete. On the third, the draft NGO law threatens to weaken the very organisations that press for the other two.

What holds Sri Lanka back from a higher place are the same things that fed the war at home and also feed international conflict that rages elsewhere in the world. These are racism or ethnic nationalism that is narrow-focused, corruption and lawlessness. Equality, accountability and the rule of law are their remedies. The present government has committed itself to these, and is a significant improvement over governments of the recent past. But these pillars are not held up by governments alone. Peace is made in villages, workplaces and university campuses. It is made by families who insist on the truth about their disappeared, by journalists and lawyers who expose abuse, and by community organisations that bring Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese into practical cooperation.

Unfinished Work

The UN High Commissioner’s report to the current Human Rights Council session, covering October 2025 to July 2026, shows how much remains to be done. The Prevention of Terrorism Act is still being applied, producing arbitrary arrests and long detention without charge. The report calls for a moratorium pending repeal and for the release of long-term detainees. Military-occupied land has not been released, memorialisation lacks support, and tensions over land and religious sites persist. The Batticaloa district illustrates how such problems endure. In the past three years, two Presidents, Ranil Wickremesinghe and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, have visited and instructed that the dispute over grazing land in Mailaththamadu and Mathavanai be resolved. It is a dispute between Tamil cattle farmers and outside Sinhala cultivators, and it has not been resolved. When two Presidents issue instructions and nothing changes, the fault lies in the machinery of State. An unresolved dispute does not stand still. It hardens into the next grievance.

Accountability shows the same pattern. The report documents torture and deaths in custody, and surveillance and intimidation of activists, journalists and civil society. Serious cases remain stalled for years, among them the killing of seventeen aid workers of Action Contre la Faim in Muttur two decades ago. Sharper still is the case of the Eastern University refugee camp at Vantharamoolai, where in 1990 the army took away 158 persons in a single day. They were never seen again. The camp’s officer-in-charge, Dr T. Jayasingam, later Vice Chancellor of the university, identified the officers responsible. More than three decades on, those officers have not been questioned. These cases are still remembered because families, survivors and independent witnesses have refused to let them be forgotten. Meanwhile several commissions of inquiry have completed their investigations but nothing further has happened.

What South Africa, Argentina and other post-conflict societies have found indispensable are four pillars of what is called “Transitional Justice” which are truth, accountability, reparations and non-recurrence. In Sri Lanka’s circumstances, truth means credible, independent investigation of what happened to the disappeared, and support for memorialisation. Accountability means prosecuting Muttur, Vantharamoolai and comparable cases, and removing credibly accused persons from senior office. Reparations mean compensation for victims and the return of military-held land. Non-recurrence means repealing the Prevention of Terrorism Act, releasing those held under it in the meantime, and resolving local disputes such as Mailaththamadu before delay hardens them. A country that buries its past does not escape it. The past returns in the next generation.

Civil Society

It is against this background that the draft NGO law is most troubling. The proposed legislation contains sweeping provisions for State oversight and control of civil society organisations. Among these are enforcing a licensing requirement on NGOs, which is to be renewed every three years, and severe penalties for not submitting reports on time, or for spending on emergency flood relief (for instance) when the NGOs mandate is peacebuilding (as an example) with possible sanctions including deregistration and having to shut down. Civil society groups have warned that it would confer excessive discretion over their registration and operations. Officials in Sri Lanka have abused such powers in the past. Additional power without effective checks invites further abuse. Sound regulation would have clear criteria for registration, an independent registrar and a right of appeal to the courts. What cannot be justified is a regime in which registration becomes a licence to be withheld from organisations that scrutinise policy, expose abuses or advocate for the rights of citizens.

Democracy is based on checks and balances. Those who press for accountability are part of those checks. The contradiction is plain. A government that has pledged accountability, equality and the rule of law ought not to be preparing to weaken the very organisations that press for their fulfilment. The organisations most exposed are those working on disappearances, land, memorialisation and reconciliation in the North and East, where the State’s record is weakest and the need for independent witnesses greatest. Silencing them would not remove the grievances they document. It would remove the channel through which those grievances are addressed peacefully. The government appears to be relenting, which is welcome, but a pause is not a withdrawal. The bill should be withdrawn and any replacement drafted in genuine consultation with those it would govern.

Investment in peace as called for by the UN in its International Peace Day theme implies commitment over time, with returns that come slowly. Sri Lanka’s 30-place rise on the Global Peace Index is a first dividend and nothing more. It can be built upon only if the government matches its commitments with action: withdrawing or fundamentally redrafting the NGO law, repealing or suspending the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and bringing Muttur, Vantharamoolai and Mailaththamadu to resolution. A higher place in a global index is not a certificate of success. Sri Lanka’s higher ranking is an encouraging start, but it will endure only if the space in which citizens speak, question and organise is protected. Peace is built from below, and a government that is serious about it will treat civil society as a partner rather than a threat.

Features

Africa is buying: Sri Lanka must start selling

Published

20 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

A call to Sri Lankan exporters and agencies: Can Sri Lanka compete with China and India in Africa?

By Kana V. Kananathan
Former Ambassador

Sri Lanka has spent decades concentrating its exports on traditional markets in Europe, North America and Asia. Yet across the Indian Ocean lies a rapidly expanding market that remains significantly underdeveloped by Sri Lankan exporters: Africa.

The opportunity is not theoretical. Sri Lanka already exports packaging, textiles, rubber products, pharmaceuticals, paper, machinery and electrical goods to African markets. The question is whether these modest beginnings can be transformed into a serious export strategy—and whether Sri Lanka can compete against the enormous commercial presence of China and India.

The answer is yes—but Sri Lanka must compete differently.

Kenya: Gateway to East Africa

Kenya should be the starting point.

Sri Lanka exported approximately US$32.08 million to Kenya in 2025, while importing US$11.41 million. But US$32 million is tiny compared with the opportunity: Kenya imported more than US$24 billion in 2025. Even a 1% share of that market would represent nearly US$240 million in annual exports.

And the commercial base already exists. Sri Lanka’s 2025 exports to Kenya included approximately US$9.99 million in paper and paperboard products, US$9.73 million in knitted fabrics, US$3.64 million in pharmaceuticals, US$1.24 million in rubber products and US$1.20 million in machinery.

Kenya’s import structure is equally revealing. In the third quarter of 2025, industrial supplies represented 34.4% of imports, machinery and capital equipment 19.2%, food and beverages 9.0%, and consumer goods 7.3%. The opportunity for Sri Lanka, therefore, extends well beyond consumer goods—we can become a supplier to African industry.

But competition is fierce. Asia supplied around 70% of Kenya’s imports in 2025, with imports from China rising 16.5% and those from India 11.3%.

Sri Lanka cannot challenge China and India across every product category. Nor should it try. We must target sectors where quality, specialisation, reliability, technical capability, smaller production runs and flexibility matter more than simply offering the lowest price.

Where Can Sri Lanka Compete?

Packaging is an obvious starting point. Cartons, boxes, bags and labels are already among Sri Lanka’s exports to Kenya. Importantly, some Sri Lankan companies operating in Kenya are themselves importing these products from Sri Lanka. The market already exists; the challenge is to scale it.

As Africa’s food-processing, pharmaceutical, apparel and consumer-goods industries expand, demand for sophisticated packaging will grow with them. Sri Lanka already possesses the manufacturing capability and industry experience to capture a larger share.

Industrial rubber products, tyres, gloves and specialised rubber components offer another opportunity where Sri Lanka has established manufacturing expertise.

The apparel supply chain is equally promising. Rather than competing directly with African garment factories, Sri Lanka can supply fabrics, elastics, labels, packaging and specialised textile inputs.

Some Sri Lankan apparel manufacturing and export companies already established in Kenya, Togo, Ghana and Ethiopia are importing several of these inputs from Sri Lanka. The supply chain, therefore, already exists. The next step is to move beyond supplying Sri Lankan-owned factories and become a competitive input supplier to the wider African apparel industry.

Other sectors deserving systematic market development include pharmaceuticals and medical consumables, processed foods, biscuits and confectionery, coconut products, cinnamon and spices, electrical products and cables, industrial chemicals, ceramics, light engineering, agricultural equipment and food-processing machinery.

Sri Lanka should also look beyond physical goods. IT, fintech, banking technology, engineering, healthcare, hospitality management and professional services largely escape the freight disadvantage confronting merchandise exports.

The Tariff Problem Can Become an Opportunity

Market access cannot be discussed without tariffs.The East African Community applies a Common External Tariff with bands of 0%, 10%, 25% and 35%, while certain sensitive products attract still higher protection. Simply filling containers in Colombo with finished consumer goods will therefore not always be commercially competitive.

But that obstacle points towards a bigger opportunity: manufacture in Africa.

Sri Lankan businesses could export intermediate materials while undertaking final assembly, manufacturing, processing or packaging in Kenya. Packaging companies could establish converting plants; electrical manufacturers could assemble locally; pharmaceutical companies could explore manufacturing or packaging partnerships; and food companies could undertake final processing closer to consumers.

Kenya would then become more than an export destination. It could become Sri Lanka’s manufacturing and distribution gateway into East and Central Africa.

With the East African Community now comprising eight partner states and extending geographically from the Indian Ocean towards the Atlantic, establishing a regional presence is increasingly more important than viewing each African country in isolation.

West Africa Cannot Be Ignored

Sri Lanka simultaneously needs a West African strategy.

Ghana offers potential as an English-speaking commercial gateway and host of the AfCFTA Secretariat. Nigeria, with its enormous population and consumer economy, should be approached as a major market in its own right, despite its greater regulatory, currency and operational complexity.

ECOWAS tariff bands of 0%, 5%, 10%, 20% and 35% again make product selection critical. Sri Lanka should concentrate on products with sufficient differentiation and margins to absorb freight, tariffs and distributor costs.

Pharmaceuticals demonstrate both the opportunity and the challenge. Nigeria imported approximately US$766 million in pharmaceuticals in 2025, with India supplying roughly US$394 million and China US$131 million. Ghana imported approximately US$301 million, with India supplying about US$140 million.

Sri Lanka cannot simply offer another generic product and expect to beat India on price. We must identify specialised products, reliable supply arrangements, partnerships and, where commercially justified, local production or packaging.

Stop Promoting Sectors—Identify Products

Sri Lanka now needs an Africa Export Opportunity Study based on individual products, not broad sectors.

The Export Development Board, Foreign Ministry, chambers and private sector should jointly identify 15–20 priority products. For each product, Sri Lanka should calculate the HS code, African annual import demand, principal suppliers, Chinese and Indian market shares, applicable duties, freight from Colombo, regulatory requirements, distributor margins and final landed price.

That will tell us where Sri Lanka genuinely has a competitive advantage.

The Commercial Test

Before spending resources promoting a product, apply one simple test:

African import demand + Sri Lankan production capability + tariff + freight + distributor margin + regulatory cost = final landed competitiveness against China, India and local African production.

Only products that pass this test should receive concentrated export-promotion resources.

This would move Sri Lanka away from exhibitions, delegations and general discussions towards what ultimately matters: specific products, specific buyers, specific distributors and actual export orders.

Give Our Missions Targets

Commercial diplomacy must become results-driven. The Government should set clear annual trade and investment targets for every Sri Lankan mission in Africa.

Missions should be evaluated not merely on diplomatic activity, but on buyers and distributors identified, business introductions made, investments facilitated, market barriers resolved and measurable exports generated.

In a competitive Africa, our missions must become active economic frontlines not merely diplomatic outposts.

A practical strategy could operate through three commercial gateways: Nairobi for East and Central Africa, Accra for selected West African markets and Lagos for Nigeria.

Sri Lanka’s total exports of goods and services reached approximately US$17.25 billion in 2025. Capturing even a small additional share of Africa’s enormous import market could, therefore, make a meaningful contribution to export earnings, investment and foreign-exchange generation.

Africa Will Not Wait

Sri Lankan exporters must stop looking at Africa as a distant or difficult market and start treating it as a strategic growth market.

We cannot compete with China and India on scale, but we can compete on quality, specialisation, flexibility and reliability. Exporters must identify country-specific opportunities, establish strong local distributors, build partnerships with African businesses and use Sri Lankan companies already operating on the continent as gateways into regional supply chains.

Where freight and tariffs weaken competitiveness, businesses must be prepared to move towards local assembly, joint ventures and manufacturing in Africa. Exporters cannot do it alone. They need aggressive, measurable and results-driven commercial diplomacy from Sri Lanka’s missions.

Africa is buying. Its markets are being captured now. Sri Lanka must stop watching from the sidelines. We must enter, compete, build our presence and secure our share.

(Ambassador Kana Kananathan is a businessman, Diplomat, lobbyist and an expert in African affairs, with over four decades of experience on the African continent. A long-time resident of Africa, he served as Sri Lanka’s envoy to Uganda and Kenya, with concurrent accreditation to 22 African Nations, and was the permanent representative to UN Habitat and UN environmental Programme. Over the years, he has been the Elections Monitor across the continent, working closely with African governments, and built enduring partnerships with African leaders. He also served as Economic and Investments Advisor to former President Professor Alpha Condé of the Republic of Guinea)

Features

Memories and Midnight Magic: Recipe for a perfect 31st Night dance

Published

20 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

The heart of a great 31st Night dance is memory, and memories come rushing back when those 70s, 80s and 90s golden oldies begin to play — those timeless tunes that make revellers, young and old, rush to the floor and dance the night away.

A perfect 31st Night is not just a party. It is a journey. A journey through time.

The music should flow like a love story. Start slow, start soft. Let couples glide into a waltz for romance. Let the floor come alive with a twist, a rock ‘n’ roll, a jive. Let nostalgia build with beautiful sing-along oldies generally associated with a New Year’s Eve dance.

This is the art that many of our entertainers seem to have forgotten.

The final hour, before midnight, is sacred. It should be collective energy at its peak. The entire crowd, on the dance floor, linking arms, swaying together, singing, at the top of their voices, those sing-along favourites.

Yes, I’m referring to those immortal, nostalgic favourites that unite the world: ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ ‘When The Saints Go Marching In,’ ‘Roll Out The Barrel,’ ‘Celebration,’ ‘She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain,’ ‘Happy Days Are Here Again,’ and so many more.

One wonders if some of our modern entertainers have even heard of these nostalgia anthems that traditionally lead up to the dawning of the New Year! This is not just music; this is ritual.

Then comes THE moment: Lights dim. Music pauses. A hush falls. The countdown begins — 10, 9, 8… — hugs, wishes, tears of joy, and then … ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ Hands crossed, voices united, bidding farewell to the old and welcoming the new. That moment makes or breaks the night.

Here is the truth that many genuine 31st Night revellers feel but hesitate to say — an overdose of baila music at New Year’s Eve events is NOT welcome.

Of course, baila is required. Baila is our Sri Lankan heartbeat! But a 31st Night dance is for everyone.

When it’s ONLY baila, the twist and rock n’ roll lovers, the waltz kings and queens feel left out. And they are the very people who MADE nostalgia! They are the die-hard revellers who have kept the 31st Night spirit alive for decades.

A family mentioned to me that they went along with friends for a 31st Night dance, in the city, to usher in 2026, and were thoroughly disappointed with the setup.

The bands in attendance, they said, failed to generate the excitement generally associated with a 31st Night event.

If given a free hand, the music at certain Colombo venues will be mostly baila, and that is going to disappoint many. Some are already worried that it will be just a baila scene this year, as well.

A memorable 31st Night respects all rhythms … yes, a waltz for romance, a twist and rock n’ roll for that 60s magic, a cha-cha, a slow foxtrot, and then the baila, after the countdown anthem.

That balance is what makes it inclusive, classy, and truly fun-filled.

Organisers, especially in Colombo, should keep this in mind: let it be 70% nostalgia – Western, and 30% baila, with the last hour left for pure baila madness, after the New Year is in!

Organisers must work out the programme for their 31st Night and instruct the entertainers to follow those instructions. The band should not dictate the night; the spirit of nostalgia should.

This New Year, let’s give Colombo what it truly wants — memories, midnight magic, and music for every soul on the floor.

Let’s dance into 2027 with class.