Kumar Navaratnam was a locally popular rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 singer in Colombo

Colombo

Colombo is the largest city of Sri Lanka. It is located on the west coast of the island and adjacent to Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte, the capital of Sri Lanka. Colombo is often referred to as the capital of the country, since Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte is a satellite city of Colombo...

, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...

 during the 1980s and 1990s.

Sri Lankan music

The dominant music genre in Sri Lanka is Sinhalese and Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

 pop songs based on bollywood

Bollywood

Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...

 film music and Baila

Baila

Baila is a form of dance music popular on the island of Sri Lanka. The genre originated centuries ago among the 'kaffir' or Afro-Sinhalese communities and was later amalgamated with European instruments and eastern and western rhythms, especially rhythms found in Spain and northern European folk...

 music. Thus the emergence of western rock bands in the 1980s was an unusual phenomenon. Further Kumar was a minority Tamil musician in a field dominated by Goans, foreigners and other locals.

End of an era

Kumar Navaratnam emigrated to Bourneville in late 1970s at the height of his popularity in Sri Lanka. As a musician he started as a bass guitarist and switched to lead guitar and introduced and played Rock and Hard Rock. No one ever has done it before him. His departure to the US created a void in the music scene in Sri Lanka for sometime.

External links

• Collection of Sinhala Video Songs