An Analytical Study of the Poetic Language in the Sinhala Song Compositions of Sri Chandaratne Manawasinghe and Premakirthi De Alvis Based on Their Selected Lyrics

Abstract

The song is a combination of literature and music. The poet creates a song by embellishing the lyrics, the musician should manipulate the chords to create a melodious and meaningful melody. For a successful song, the tune and lyrics greatly matter. Thus, the poet’s attention should be paid not only to the taste of sound but also to the taste of meaning. In general, the combination of semantics is unique in the poetic language. Sri Chandraratne Manawasinghe and Premakirthi De Alvis are two famous songwriters who took Sinhala songs to a new dimension. Representing two eras, they were able to add meaning to Sinhala songs through poetic language in comparison with the past songs through radio and film songs. They deserve recognition for firmly establishing a place for song lyrics within Sinhala literary culture. The intent of the study is to investigate the poetic language in the Sinhala song compositions of Sri Chandaratne Manawasinghe and Premakirthi De Alvis based on their selected lyrics. Selected lyrics based on their film & radio songs. This being a qualitative study, focuses on documented resources as primary resources of the research. Therefore, text analysis and literary appreciation will be used in relation to methodology to arrive at the conclusion which establishes the view that their lyrical approaches place them as the innovative and the path-breaking lyricists in Sinhala songs compositions. As secondary resources, books, scholarly documents, and newspaper articles on their lyrics were used. The findings of the research prove that the lyrics by Sri Chandraratne Manawasinghe and Premakirthi De Alvis contain the taste of the sound, and the taste of the meaning and both of them are creative and aesthetic lyricists and it has been confirmed how much the use of poetic language in a song affects the success of a song through the subjective concepts of Eastern and Western traditional philosophers and poets.