{"id":118789,"date":"2021-10-01T23:52:52","date_gmt":"2021-10-02T05:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=118789"},"modified":"2021-10-02T15:02:03","modified_gmt":"2021-10-02T22:02:03","slug":"yohani-sri-lankas-multifaceted-manike-gem-has-been-snatched-by-india-aiyo-but-no-problem-it-is-turning-out-to-be-all-for-the-best-for-her-and-for-the-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/10\/01\/yohani-sri-lankas-multifaceted-manike-gem-has-been-snatched-by-india-aiyo-but-no-problem-it-is-turning-out-to-be-all-for-the-best-for-her-and-for-the-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Yohani, Sri Lanka\u2019s multifaceted \u2018Manike\u2019 (Gem), has been snatched by India? Aiyo! BUT, no problem; it is turning out to be all for the best for her and for the country."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Sri\nLanka is sliding into international fame, perhaps for the first time since the\nCricket World Cup win in 1996, but on a much larger scale, due to Yohani\u2019s\ngradual emergence over the past two or three years, first as a bilingual\n(Sinhala and English), then as a multilingual, singer and rapper. Her\nbreathtaking shoot to global stardom a couple of months back seems to have\ngiven a boost to the country\u2019s difficult process of coming in from the cold,\ninto which it had been unduly consigned through geopolitics-driven false\npropaganda. The young singer and rapper Yohani\u2019s video of her cover song\n\u2018Manike Mage Hithe\u2019 (Lady in My Heart), featuring fellow artiste Satheeshan\nRatnayake, went viral overnight, and has got over 133M views by the time of\nwriting (October 1, 2021). This is an astronomically high number of views for a\nYou Tube video of a Sri Lankan artiste singing in Sinhala, the native tongue of\nover 75% (actually over 80%) of Sri Lankans, though hardly known outside Sri\nLanka. The video triggered the unexpected Yohani phenomenon that is currently\nsweeping the cross-border popular music scene, particularly in subcontinental\nIndia, Europe and America. (May it not be a short lived Yohani craze!) It is\nbound to have an immense vitalizing effect on the young Sri Lankan music\nentrepreneurs\u2019 foray into the regional and global music market. (The latter,\nincluding, for example, the Bhatiya-Santush duo, Iraj, etc., have been active\nabroad, quite successfully, for many years already; the three mentioned have\nbeen extending their support to Yohan for years, as far as I know.) The whole\naffair will provide an unprecedentedly powerful impetus for defining and\nprojecting the musical, linguistic and literary  aspects of our cultural\nidentity and heritage to the outside world. Most Sri Lankans across the world,\ngazing up for a new star of hope to delight their sight and refresh their\nmorale, warmly welcomed her sudden rise to starry heights. At the moment Yohani\n– with her Manike Mage fame – is taking crowds by storm, being in the middle of\nher tour of India. Over the past weeks she was interviewed by a number national\nTV channels in India. She\u2019s also been contracted by the mega Indian\nentertainment company (started 1983) T-Series, whose You Tube channel currently\nhas 194M subscribers (and this number is bound to rise further due to the\nco-option of Yohani). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yohani\ngenerously shares the credit for the success of \u2018Manike Mage Hithe\u2019 with the\nmembers of her team: the gifted musician Chamath Sangeeth whom she implicitly\nrecognizes as the principal contributor to the magic of \u2018Manike Mage Hithe\u2019,\nher competent co-artiste, singer and  rapper Satheeshan Rathnayake, who,\nin fact, sang the song first, creative rapper and lyricist Dulanja Alwis,\nskilled guitarist Shane Vas, and versatile video director, editor and colourist\nPasindu Kaushalya. As one interested in the study of verbal arts, I have\nfollowed these professionals  being hosted in some social media videos.\n(In the past, in my inexcusable ignorance, I used to scoff at such serious\nmusic genres as rap, hiphop, etc., until properly enlightened on them by my\ndaughter.) Something that I have realised about these young geniuses (I\nhonestly think that they deserve that description.) is that all of them take\ntheir chosen fields seriously and work hard to achieve excellence; they have a\nhighly cultured, non-mercenary, professional attitude towards their art. They\nare keenly aware of the inspirational legacy that the greats of the past in\nSinhala music have left and acknowledge the debt they owe them.  Equally\nheartening is the fact that these young artistes display an unselfconscious\nlove of their motherland and  take pride in a genuine sense of inclusive\nnational cultural identity as Sri Lankans. They do not come exclusively from\none social background; it is a mixture of urban, suburban, and rural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yohani\nDiloka de Silva (b. 1993) lives in Colombo. She attended the leading girls\u2019\nschool Vishaka Vidyalaya up to her OLs. During her schooling in Sri Lanka, she\ntook part in sports (swimming and water polo) and group events. Then she\nproceeded to London in 2012, where she studied at the Hatch End High School and\ncompleted her ALs. Having returned to Sri Lanka she got admission to the\nKotalawala Defence University, Kandawala, Ratmalana, and obtained her first\ndegree in Logistics. Then she went to Australia for her Master\u2019s. Having\nobtained a Master\u2019s degree in Accounting with distinction, she returned home to\nSri Lanka.  While studying abroad, she pursued her musical training. Later\nshe dabbled in photography, even covering weddings. Yohani drifted into music\nsomewhat accidentally, it appears. She did some club singing to earn some extra\nincome, as she wanted to be independent. She has engaged in her musical career\nin a more professional way since 2019. Bhatiya Jayakody, a senior musical\nartist and entrepreneur who has for years adopted a mentoring attitude towards\nher, says that Yohani is a \u2018very intelligent and smart\u2019 artiste. He is one who\ngot her to perform in his shows before, and foresaw a great career in music for\nher. Asked by Iraj, another very successful Sri Lankan musician with lucrative\ninternational appeal engagements, on a Yfm Channel interview in January 2020,\nabout her main target, Yohani replied that she wanted to work with\ninternational artistes. To reach her target she\u2019s worked with a vengeance. It\nis basically thanks to her own initiative and hard training that she is where\nshe is today.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yohani\nis the elder of the two daughters of Major General Prasanna de Silva who\ncommanded the 55th Division of the Sri Lanka army in the final  antiterrorist\nwar that ended in victory in 2009. Prasanna de Silva played a very prominent\nrole in that war, making many personal sacrifices. \u2018Road to Nandikadal: True\nStory of Defeating Tamil Tigers\u2019 (2016) written by his comrade in arms Major\nGeneral Kamal Gunaratne features a photograph of Major General Prasanna de\nSilva under the general caption \u2018Immortal leaders of the final war\u2019 (p.\n416-417). Her mother Dinithi de Silva worked as an air hostess at Sri Lankan\nAirlines. Yohani\u2019s sister who is younger is studying medicine in Russia to\nbecome a doctor. During her childhood, she and her family suffered many\nhardships due to the circumstance that her father was serving in the army in\nthe embattled North.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yohani\nseems to have inherited her father\u2019s soldierly qualities of personal courage,\ndoggedness, and sangfroid in her personal and professional life. She is\nmulti-talented. Apart from being a singer and rapper, she is a song writer,\nmodel, and photographer. She\u2019s had to endure baseless attacks on her personal\nreputation in the social media, provoked usually by the green-eyed monster.\nThough she was thoroughly upset by this at the beginning, her parents advised\nher to ignore such cowardly harassment and get on with her life. That\u2019s what\nshe has done. She emerged unscathed from the abuse of her celebrity status by\nsocial media purveyors of pornography, something that can be safely ignored.\nWith her new star status, he\u2019s started receiving ambiguous attention from a\ndifferent direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nIndian High Commission in Colombo, on September 21 or so, issued a statement\nappointing Yohani a cultural ambassador between Sri Lanka and India,  and\nthe photograph of what was purported to be a picture of a function held in the\nHC premises to felicitate her appeared in the media, even before the Sri Lankan\ngovernment got any chance to acknowledge her star status as  a Sri\nLankan  citizen\u2019s achievement, which it actually was. Seen in a bad light,\nthis would prompt one to ask: Why this indecent hurry on the part of India? What\nunderlies the premature gesture? A mutual relationship of genuine cooperation\nor unequal competition between monstrously large India and ridiculously small\nSri Lanka? As far as we know, there\u2019s no need for any special cultural\nambassador. The cultural bonds between India and Sri Lanka have remained strong\nfor thousands of years, though political relations have got strained due to\nattempted big-brotherly snatches from time to time over the same long period of\nhistory. Has India been inspired by America\u2019s alleged Everything for us,\nnothing for other people\u201d policy? Has Big Brother India begun laying claim to\nlittle brother Sri Lanka\u2019s intellectual property, just as it is trying to grab\nthe latter\u2019s physical assets? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seen\nin a favourable light, the Indian High Commission\u2019s honouring of Yohani may be\ninterpreted as India\u2019s prompt official recognition of the Indians\u2019 embrace of\nYohani as a common cultural icon of the two nations. According to the IHC,\nseveral Indian TV Channels had interviewed Yohani: It is a proud moment for\nthe latest Cultural Ambassador, Yohani de Silva, to appear on India\u2019s national\ntelevision channels. With over 110 million YouTube views, her song \u2018Menike Mage Hithe\u2019\nhas won the hearts of millions of people in India, from celebrities to the\ngeneral public. It reflects the true sweetness and depth of the thousands of\nyears old Indo-Sri Lankan relationship,\u201d (Source: Lanka Truth Channel\/September\n21, 2021).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agreed.\nBut it is important not to violate that sweetness and depth\u201d of the enduring\nIndo-Lankan relationship through the hasty intervention of time-serving\npoliticians in such autonomous cultural interaction between the two countries\nthat is taking place now triggered by the Yohani phenomenon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yohani\nis a trailblazer for the Sri Lankan youth who must take care of the country\u2019s\nfuture.  This invaluable asset of Sri Lanka should not be expropriated by\nany foreign friend or foe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala Sri Lanka is sliding into international fame, perhaps for the first time since the Cricket World Cup win in 1996, but on a much larger scale, due to Yohani\u2019s gradual emergence over the past two or three years, first as a bilingual (Sinhala and English), then as a multilingual, singer and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rohana-r-wasala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}