Pursuing your dream is never easy, especially when it comes to the music industry where artistes are easily manipulated into a certain image to suit the public, but thankfully there are artistes like Chinthika Ranaweera who push through the ‘commercial image’ with their unrelenting love for original music.
With a passion for singing since childhood, this songbird began professionally writing and recording her own tracks 6 years ago, “I’ve always loved to sing, ever since I was in nursery, I sang in the choir while in Musaeus College but I kept a low profile and didn’t get involved in productions as my parents didn’t encourage it. After school, when I realised this was what I really wanted, I asked a friend to help me get into the industry but my friend said no. I was told if I wanted to get in the industry I needed to do it on my own.”
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Inspired by musicians such as Amaradeva, Clarence Wijewardena, Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson, in due course, Chinthika unintentionally composed her first song, “I never even knew I could write lyrics, it just happened,” she recalled. This promising beginning unfortunately did not turn out well for her as after recording the track, not only did local radio stations refuse to play it, but later on the track was made popular by another artiste, who gave her no credit at all. It was after this disappointing episode that she decided to take her recordings more seriously to stop further exploitation of her music.
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Since then, altogether 10 tracks have been recorded in both Sinhala and English, one english song entilted Lost, a song Chinthika cherishes as it was based on personal experiences, received heavy radio air play. Describing her lyrical style as not commercially centric but honest good music, Chinthika states that she always writes from her heart, “When I write my songs, I don’t write for the masses or with any particular crowd in mind. I write from the heart and then put a melody to them.” While she does occasionally write lyrics for other artistes, unless she is given a melody that she feels strongly about, she generally turns down reqeusts to write songs.
The dazzling beauty is a regular voice-over artiste and has been a part of many TV commercials and photo shoots. She is also studying to become a pastry chef and hopes to start her own business someday. “Music will always be a huge part of my life, it’s my passion. But I also love cooking and would like to try selling my own pastries too, so I will try to balance them both out.”
Currently, there are no plans to record a full album but she will be releasing a new single in the coming weeks titled ‘Attitude’, a song about encouraging women’s empowerment that she decribes as a blues/rock song.
Speaking about her desire to stand out from other musicians, Chinthika said, “I’m not a mainstream artiste, I want to do something different with my music. All you hear on the radio these days is the same sounds played repeatedly. There’s no longer the drive to make anything new. It’s the ‘ring tone’ trend. The music industry here is based on ring tone sales whereas in other countries they are are free of charge; here they focus on ring tone sales to keep the industry going and there’s a lot of favouritism to certain artistes. That doesn’t allow new artistes to blossom, they just get criticism and no appreciation for trying to do something different.”
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Aside from her solo career, Chinthika has recently begun a side project with guitarist Duminda Nawarathne called “The Melody Addicts”, videos of them performing originals and covers in three languages, English, Sinhala and Hindi will be uploaded to their new Youtube channel. Explaining the concept behind the group, she said, “the covers will be our own take on the songs. Not many people do that here, covers are generally played as they are to please a crowd but we’re doing it simply for the love of the music.”
By Lake Argent
Pics by Waruna Wanniarachchi
Location: Cioconat Lounge
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