Kumar Navaratnam was a popular

rock and roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock-n-roll, and rock 'n' roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from African ...

singer in

Colombo Colombo, ( ; , ; , ), is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. The Colombo metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of 5.6 million, and 752,993 within the municipal limits. It is the ...

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

during the 1960s and 1970s.

Sri Lankan music

The dominant music genre in Sri Lanka is (and still remains) Sinhalese and

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

pop songs based on

Bollywood Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, is primarily produced in Mumbai. The popular term Bollywood is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (former name of Mumbai) and "Cinema of the United States, Hollywood". The in ...

film music and the local

Baila music Baila (also known as bayila; from the Portuguese verb ''bailar'', meaning ''to dance'') is a form of music, popular in Sri Lanka and among Goan Catholics in India. The genre originated centuries ago among the Portuguese Burghers and Sri Lankan ...

. Thus, the emergence of Western rock bands in the 1980s was regarded as an unusual phenomenon. Further, Navaratnam was a minority

musician in a field dominated by

Goan Goans ( Romi Konkani: , ) is the demonym used to describe the people native to Goa, India, formerly part of Portuguese India (''Estado Português da Índia''). They form an ethno-linguistic group resulting from the assimilation of Indo-Aryan, ...

s, foreigners and other locals.

End of an era

As a musician, he started as a bass guitarist and switched to lead guitar, introducing Rock and Hard Rock to Sri Lankan audiences. His departure to Bourneville, USA at the height of his popularity in the late 1970s created a void in the music scene in Sri Lanka that lasted for sometime. The sheer number of rock music festivals and concerts Navaratnam conducted (famed for running from 6.00pm to 6.00am, particularly at Havelock Park) is yet to be matched by contemporary rock groups on the island. Kumar remains regarded as a pioneer of Sri Lankan Western music.

References

Leading names like Kumar Navaratnam 2004

External links

Collection of Sinhala Video Songs
Sri Lankan Tamil musicians Sri Lankan Tamil people 20th-century Sri Lankan male singers Living people Sri Lankan Hindus Year of birth missing (living people) Sri Lankan singers Sri Lankan guitarists {{SriLanka-bio-stub