Sri Lanka has always had a fairly vibrant local music industry, with each generation producing it's own 'revolutionary' musician, setting a trend and taking the industry forward. I'm referring to people like Clarence Wijewardena who brought the electric guitar and pop music into Sri Lanka and B&S who made Sri Lankan rap and hip-hop mainstream here.
Unfortunately I'm not aware of any local bands that made a serious attempt to take rock music to where pop and rap/hip hop are in Sri Lanka; something I've been waiting for because I honestly prefer rock and would like to hear it playing on radios other than my own. We've actually got a large number of great rock bands here, but the problem I think is that none of them actually did what was necessary to go mainstream; sing in a local language. There are thousands of English rock songs a Sri Lankan can listen to, sung by musicians hailing from Canada to Australia, so one more won't make a difference, regardless of the fact that it it's sung by a Sri Lankan. What made the difference with the trend setters was that they gave the people a new style of music in our language!
Nemesis, a local band I've been a fan of for quite some time are taking shot at this. They've taken the effort to put together a great song, accompanied by a video that does justice to the music. All I have right now is the trailer, but going by that, I think these guys have the best chance of taking rock mainstream here yet! Don't just take my word for it though, watch and decide.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
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