CHITRAL SOMAPALA ENERGETIC SANS ILLUSIONS ,ROCK HEAVY METAL RENOWNED VOCALIST CELEBRATED IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES IN AFFERVESCANT VOYAGE OF OVER THREE DECADES – By Sunil Thenabadu

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Peragaswatte Chandana Chitral Somapala, born on 4th November 1966 in Colombo, also known as “Chity”, categorised as a Sri Lankan ‘hard rock’ ,’heavy metal’ vocalist cum a music composer and director , a practical and realistic unique individual had listened to English music when young which had inspired him to sing English numbers.

His parent duo is legendary musicians, directors, producers and soloists PLA Somapala and Chithra nee Perera , having four siblings, three brothers Prasanna, Rohan, Nalin and solitary sister Piumi. Evidently, Chitral has inherited music genre affiliations from his parents’ duo who possessed talent in abundance. Chitral recreated several of mother’s songs like ‘Dambulu Gale”,”Sukumala Banda Nalawa”, which had received mixed feedbacks from critics which is infamous of typical Sri Lankans. Chitral, is well recognized for his work with European power metal bands v.i.z., bands Firewind, Power Quest, Avalon, Faro, Red Circuit, and Civilization One. Chitral earned fame secondarily in his home territory with his Sinhala track  “Nadee Ganga”  released in 1997 is still a ‘hit’ though it was made  twenty five years back, with many doing cover songs too.His growth to date in the musical amphitheatre has been unprecedented to very high elevations.

Chitral has had his education at Isipathana College in Colombo 05, had excelled in sports like cricket,soccer and hockey but not for singing prowess, which he had commenced when he was only eighteen years old.But when he was thirteen years old had begun learning the guitar as a passion.Chitral reminisces his younger days as a bit of a arrogant, stubborn child who had demanded a guitar from father despite having all other musical oriental instruments at home. He prompted about his father PLA Somapala been called ‘Pittala band Karaya” for introducing all sophisticated western brass musical instruments like trumpets, saxophones, electric guitars, acoustic drums for his melodies, for which he himself ,Sunil Shantha,CT Fernando,RR Samarakoon had even been banned for a short period from our musical activities. The above personnel were westernized Sinhalese personnel during the decade of 1950’s and 1960’s, it was the very reason they endeavoured to westernize our music to be in par with the music world over.  Chitral lamented that if not for this change the present-day music would not have been in this standard, in a firm stance to compete with foreign music melodies and bands.  During school days Chitral with the pocket money collected had bought a melody cassette of John Lord had played repeatedly, also needed to know about his autobiography, initiated in his book ‘deep purple book, where Chitral had found him to be a classical musician, with a bit of ‘rock’ and elements of ‘western classical’ music. From his school days in complete contrast to his parent duo music genres he has had dreams and passion to be a ‘rock’ soloist. Chitral defines music as a language with different directs. In a television discussion Chitral had affirmed he has a collection of all types of music genres in the world in various forms with him which he believes all musicians should have an idea in. Chitral had added that the music of Hungary and Romania, which is referred as ‘gypsy’ music very light , even exploitation of the accordion and bango,while in countries with cold climates songs are sung loudly with hard power metal bands.Chitral admitted been a huge fan of the ‘Scorpion’ band, regrets been called as a ‘rock’ artiste, although he has recorded , launched  over twenty five albums but getting a bit sick of it, he acknowledged lamenting.

Chitral with hereditary affiliations with musical genes in his blood had joined the Sri Lankan alternative band, ‘Shock’, considered then a pioneer of computer-based music production in Sri LankaSimultaneously to having a passion for music had worked in the travel trade in short stints. Chitral had left our shores in year 1986 as many had lamented there is no scope for ‘rock music’ wearing torn trousers, discouraged him .It was during this time that so many burghers had left to foreign countries including Raja Jalaldeen, Jiffrey Hussain, Rohan de Saram as there was no scope for bands having no orchestra in native Sri Lanka. But they had become fortunate to be members of Sri Lanka London symphony orchestra.

^] In 1986, Chitral toured Europe with “Friends” nee ‘Rendesvouz’ . He joined German underground metal act,Court Jester in 1996, with whom he recorded the album ‘Forced II Believe’, which received favourable reviews in the European press. In 1997, Chitral contributed the song “Nadee Ganga”, which became a hit.^] It was originally recorded for a TV/Radio commercial to promote “Lion beer”.The song was based on the melody of “Many Rivers to Cross”,  sung with Sinhala lyrics in a hard rock and metal style ,in the inimitable elegance of Chitral.

Chitral having left the shores of native Sri Lanka had joined a German progressive ’power metal’ band,  “Avalon”, as front man and lead singer.^] Avalon was produced , a German sound engineer and producer who had worked mostly with power metal bands. Avalon was amid the underground scene going back to 1992. The third album by Avalon, ‘Vision Eden’, collected exceptional evaluations in the global press. The band’s Vision Eden Tour used Avalon as a support act for bands such as Hammer Fall, Uriah Heep,Metallica, Motorhead.Royal Hunt,Pink Cream 69 , and others.  During the summer of 2000, Chitral participated on Avalon’s 4th Album, Eurasia. Chitral can be heard playing the chapman stick an electric musical instrument created by Emmett Chapman, in the early 1970s. As a band, Avalon was more disparate than the usual power metal groups, and integrated Euro power metal with prog metal in their music, giving it a somewhat distinctive resonance. The release of Eurasia was followed by a European tour with Metalium shortly before Avalon disbanded.

In 2002, Chitral contributed “Greenland’s Theme” for his alma mater Isipathana College’s  International Rugby Championships in Sri Lanka. Later that year, Chitral formed a melodic rock outfit called Faro. The band released the albums Dawn forever , Angelost through MTM Music, also in 2002. In Summer 2003, Chitral recorded the album Echoes of a Nightmare with the Swedish symphonic metal band, Moonlight Agony for Massacre Records. In late 2003, Chitral joined the band, Firewind .He proceeded in January 2004 for a headline tour of Japan. Following the successful Japanese tour Gus G asked Chitral to join the band on a permanent basis, they collaborated on Firewind’s third album, Forged by Fire, entered the Japanese TOP 100, receiving internationally admirable analyses. After a joint tour with Hammerfall in 2005, he decided to leave Firewind.

In 2006, Chitral formed his own band, ‘Civilization One’, together with guitarist Aldo Lonobile, bassist Pierre-Emmanuel Pelisson (Maladaptive, Ex-Heavenly), and drummer Luca Cartasegna. They planned to form a band which designed hard and hostile melodies with the warmth of classical music combined with impressive vocals and choruses. The band received enhanced consideration due to their presentation at the Pog Power UK Pre-Party in 2007. By the end of the year, the line-up of “Civilization One “ switched. Only two of the initial members, Chitral and Pelisson, stayed on, Christian Muenzer , joined the band as lead guitarist. He was followed by Boern Daigger as the second guitarist. At the beginning of 2008, Holly Rodammer was named as the new drummer.

In November 2008 and October 2009, “Civilization One” was welcomed by TNL ,the biggest rock music radio station in Sri Lanka, to perform as the main act at the TNL Onstage Finals in Colombo. This was the first time a western-style heavy metal band had staged in Sri Lanka. The band’s line-up changed again in 2009, with guitarists and drummer being added to replace the previous musicians. Their debut album, ‘Revolution Rising’, was recorded in studios in France, Italy and Germany and was mixed and mastered by Markus Teske. The band finished recording its second album, ‘Calling the Gods’, in 2012.^]

Chitral  was recording and singing with the German progressive metal band Red Circuit from 2002 untill 2016 and the British classic metal rock band Rekuiem from 2008 until 2012, one of the founding members of the new wave of British heavy metal movement from Bermingham back in the early 1980s. In May 2010, Chitral joined the British power metal band “Power Quest”. During the following seventeen months as a member of the band and an album release,” Blood Alliance”. He left the band on amicable terms. Chitral  was the composer and singer of the Olympic theme song, “Dreams of Fire” for MTV Sri Lanka and composed and sang “Believing the Dream”, the official Cricket World Cup song for MTV.

In 2017, he launched his seventh music video “Sinha Lokaye Sinhaya” a motivational song, lyrics by Kelum Srimal on the 16th of January at the Colombo City Center. It was directed by internationally acclaimed director, Asad-ul-Haq. In July 2019, he launched DVD and Bluray version of the concert “Lalithakala” in memory of the loving parents duo,  in February during the ‘Memories of the fabulous Moonstones’ concert held at the BMICH.

Chitral has worked in cinematography with Chandran Ratnam,Asoka Handagama and other notable filmmakers, winning international cum national awards. Other original Sri Lankan movie music of Chitral includes: “Aherenna” in the film “Let Her Cry”, “Man Adareyi” in the film “Me Wage Adarayak”, “Miringuwa Parada”; and “Sihinaya Pupura Yai” from the movie “Dedunu Akase” Chitral  had performed as a solo singer at the 2009 and 2011 ‘Fete La Musique’ Concerts with the Luxenbourg Philharmonic Orchestra at Rock Am Knuedler with conductor Professor Gast Waltzing. He won the Best Backing Vocalist award at the 2016 Presidential Awards in Sri Lanka for the song “Aharenna”. In 2017, he again won the Best Playback Award at the SIGNIS Awards Ceremony.

Discography credits are: In 1996 –Court Jestet – “Forced To Believe” (Allister Records)1998 – Avalon – Vision Eden (Omega Records)2000 – Avalon – Eurasia (Omega Records)2000 –Aimless – Seven Stars and Supernova (Bellaphone/Allister Records) (Bass Player)2001 – Another Piece of Metal – Tribute To Scorpions (Dwell Records)2002 – Shadowkeep – A Chaos Theory – (Limb Music) – Backing Vocals 2002 -WOLFF – Metanoia – (LEICO Music, LC-7701) – Guest Vocals (some songs)2003 – FARO – Dawn of Forever (MTM Music).

Chitral describes music as a festival (senakeliya).He hates injustice whenever he hears of such, he retaliates as when he sees or hears of injustice,  in this regard he is in the forefront of all artistes .He had lived in Germany for thirty six years does music as a profession has his own band ‘Red Circuit’, in spare time teachers in a British school. Chitral always expect people to live with truth. This time he has remained in native Sri Lanka for around five years with the covid-19 related  epidemic, restriction of movements, lockdown periods, but had attended to all his personal matters.He regrets Sri Lanka would never ever come to the standards of Germany owing to a number of constraints mainly with the political administration and laws that exist which are very fragile , discipline at a low ebb etc. Chitral as a practice do not give his songs to FM radio channels as he is not a person who will like to bribe them but he upload them to his Face Book page. He is a staunch Buddhist practices it to the fullest. He is very patriotic though not a citizen of Sri Lanka is willing to sacrifice his life for the native country, he was born. He expects all citizens to be unselfish and selfless.Chitral is with no illusions , fantasies and exaggerated behaviour is simply down to earth rare individual. Chitral is still very young has a bright future ahead for which all his fans and well wishes would wish him good health and to continue his musical activities with enhanced distinction and similar disposition.

Sunil Thenabadu

e mail sthenabadu@ Hotmail.com

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