‘La Bambas’ celebrates solid 45 years

a Bambas’, the pioneer vocal harmony singing group to emerge from the music crazy town of Moratuwa during the golden era of Sinhala group songs in 1966, celebrates its anniversary in May.

‘La Bambas’ would have been celebrating 54 years of singing at this moment, if only they had continued to do so. But after the demise of leader Brian Fernando in 2013, the rest of the, members - namely Priya Peiris, Lasla Fernando, Rolinson Ferdinando, Erinto Perera and Malsiri Wijesuriya decided to lie low, since the music without the regular five some would not have sounded original. The arrival of ‘La Bambas’ in Moratuwa resulted in a flourish of similar bands emerging in the hometown.

‘La Bambas’ pursued their brand of soft and lilting music exclusively with unplugged instruments, comprising classical (gut stringed) box guitars, percussion sound sand conga drums, supplemented with two, three and four part harmony singing.

Although ‘La Bambas’ had been performing earlier at a few local functions , their first major Colombo outing was the ‘Observer Talent Contest’ at the ‘Coconut Grove’ of the Galle Face Hotel, on 25th May, 1966, which is regarded as their official founding.

SINGLE TRACK RECORDING

‘La Bambas’ had been featured in many EP records and CD productions. Their maiden 45 RPM disc produced in 1967 on the ‘Paradise’ Label was recorded on a single track machine, when all musical instruments and voices had to be recorded simultaneously. ‘This was a daunting task, not experienced by many - including group song musicians’ said Priya Peiris, of the La Bambas.

Although music was purely a hobby and a pastime right throughout their entire career, ‘it so happened that we had to take it a bit seriously due to the success and popularity of some of our songs remarked Priya Peiris.

Their signature hit ‘Cock a’ Doodle Do’ the most popular and the only successful group song composed in English, ‘Nuwara menikela’’, ‘Enna Yanna Nelum Wile’, ‘Lake Nadee’, ‘Piyakaru Mala obawe’, ‘Kurulan Piyambaala’ are among their other popular songs .

In addition, they have composed and recorded many other English and Sinhala originals such as ‘Welcome to sunny Lanka’, ‘Sri Lankan tea song’ and many more - especially to support Sri Lanka cricket.

REMARKABLE INTERNATIONAL REPERTOIRE

An unknown fact about the ‘La Bambas’, is that they were perhaps the best equipped such band to perform and sing international hits to foreign audiences. This, they did admirably during their 15 year long contract with Hotel Lanka Oberoi in the 70s and 80s period. They could perform English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, French, German, Austrian, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Japanese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Korean and many more languages. Incidentally, the band ‘La Bambas’ have the distinction of recording the largest compilation of Latin American favourite songs in the country. This was their unplugged CD, which was produced in collaboration with ‘Sooriya Village’ to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of the band in 2016.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Apart from performing music, ‘La Bambas’ , at the request of the Sri Lanka Army had conducted over 15 music workshops for a large number of army musicians in various towns of the Wanni District during the past decade. Also, they were listed as the first such group to voluntarily perform for the injured soldiers in the army hospital during the War.

INSEPERABLES

What is truly remarkable and unique about ‘La Bambas’, is the fact they endured 47 years together - a virtual lifetime, as one inseparable unit, with no breakaways at all. They are very proud of the fact ‘La Bamba music, at every point of time, was one hundred percent, pure homespun Moratuwa music, with no outside affiliates .

BRAVO La Bambas , you have done yourselves , Moratuwa and Sri Lanka really proud !