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Gayathri Khemadasa:
The chord that blends East & West
Having a world famous father does help, but Gayathri Khemadasa
prefers to carve a musical niche on her own. Although Gayathri has
virtually ‘inherited’ music from her father Premasiri Khemadasa, she is
making her own waves in the world’s ocean of music. The name of the film
for which she produced soundtracks says it all: Facing The Waves.
Gayathri, 31, is a tiny, solitary and fragile figure who looks like
she is still in her teens, though she moved to Prague from Sri Lanka 13
years ago to study at the Prague Conservatory. Music brought Gayathri to
Prague,where she studied classical piano at the Conservatory of Music
for three years.
She completed the degree in Baroque Music at the Academy of Music in
Brno. She played harpsichord as her instrument in her performance
degree.
Even though Gayathri started playing piano in her teens, which is
considered “late” in the classical world, she was surrounded, from
birth, by a complex mixture of musics, both classical Western and
traditional Sri Lankan.
“I chose to study at the conservatory because I love Bach!” she says
earnestly. She started by studying piano rigorously with Jaromˇr Koˇć,
whose teacher was a student of Franz Liszt.
After three years at the conservatory, during which she discovered
lesser-known Czech composers such as Kabel Š, Doubrava and Pelik n, as
well as the major composer Leoń Jan Šek, she went on to study
harpsichord at the Academy of Early Music. “The academy only accepts two
to three students each year, so I felt very lucky to even get in,” she
says.
Gayathri interrupted her studies for two years after the tsunami
struck Sri Lanka. Soon afterward, she returned to see her family and
assist in the relief efforts to help thousands of the displaced.
When she returned to Prague in 2005, she organised a series of
benefit concerts, playing the music of Czech composers to raise money
for tsunami victims.
“I grew up in Colombo. I don’t have particularly fond memories of
Colombo, because I felt trapped by the limitations and illusions of the
culture around me. Now, however, when I return for visits, I enjoy it
there because I’ve become an outsider.
I love getting away from Colombo and heading for the far south to
Bundela, where there are few people, and the sea sounds like silence.”
She was also involved in a documentary about victims of the tsunami,
Facing
The Waves, filmed by American Jeff Hush just three months after the
disaster. She provides the haunting soundtrack, a cycle of 10 songs for
the film, which also examines the problems of intolerance and violence
that were reopened in the wake of the tsunami.
Gayathri’s music for the film is similar to the minimalist work of
Phillip Glass, who she admits is an important influence. However, her
music has a softer, more emotional touch. And, beyond that, Gayathri
expands into her own contemporary and defiant lyricism, influenced by
Sri Lankan folk music (both Sinhalese and Tamil), recent events in her
homeland and her often difficult life in Prague.
For instance, she recalls waiting at the Muzeum metro station one
night two years ago when a man suddenly came up and kicked her hard in
the leg. “I hate dark people,” he bragged to his girlfriend, then
continued on his way.
No one came to her aid. And that was not an isolated incident.
“I never expected to find such virulent racism as I found in the
Czech Republic,” Gayathri writes on the Web site for Facing the Waves.
“The Romany people are treated as third-class citizens; on the streets I
am seen as one of them. I feel a strong solidarity with them.”
Gayathri is planning to move to Toronto in January, after she
finishes her studies at the Academy of Early Music. She will be
following her sister, who studied cybernetics in Prague on a full
scholarship at the Czech Technical University, then left after
graduating four years ago because she couldn’t take the racist attitudes
she found here. Gayathri says she’s also had enough of the racism and
intolerance. - Parague Post
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