Suresh de Silva of Stigmata answers:

Is music background artistry?

Chamikara Weerasinghe

continued from last week...

Heavy Metal band Stigmata has quietly spread their wave of music across the US, and several countries in Europe and India. Their Our Silent Chaos Serpentine record is at no.14 in www.themetalforge.com in the top 50 reviewed albums of all time poll.

It has received lots of good international reviews including a very gratifying review on International Metal site www.tmetal.com.

Stigmata has been doing their originals from the band’s inception with Tenny and Andrew on guitars, Jackson on drums, Vije on bass and Suresh on vocals.

They did several gigs in New Delhi, India last year. Also performed an acoustic rendition of Lucid for MTV.

We asked the front man of Stigmata , Suresh de Silva, what will be the fate of music under the influence of visual effects at the rate of which they are being used by some parties in the industry to promote their songs or music productions on a commercial footing.

Suresh gracefully bought some time before fielding the question on the spot. After a few days he responded.

Music today has lost its essence, relevance and its significance as a medium to be perceived by one’s ears in the background of growing technologies which appear to have made the area of music-making relatively easier than it has been about a decade ago, he said.

This has both advantages and disadvantages. But when anything becomes overtly convenient or easy before human beings, it loses its value as people take it for granted, he explained.

Gone are the days when people waited till their favourite artiste released a long-awaited album. You can’t wait till you hold it in your hands and rip the polythene off, spin it a few times while going over the CD booklet contents and the lyrics.

The accessibility has its rewards but there will be long term repercussions unless proper channels and mechanisms are used to ensure that music still remains universal.

Music has become a background artistry now. It’s a soundtrack for people who crave to socialise, interact, cook, make love, conduct business transactions or intoxicate themselves to - a commodity that sadly is corroded with a continuous lack of quality.

Now in an objective perspective if this is the case then the said music should have some immortal, timeless quality to it.

The music endorsed, enforced and shoved down the throats of the masses lacks depth, challenge, diversity, intensity and relevance.

What the masses deem to be good music is actually shallow, contrived, prefabricated and feigned. So it naturally needs a visual medium to captivate, shock and create retention in the minds of the listener.

Either the videos communicate violence, sex, extreme disorder or wealth which is just subliminal branding of the generic music formula. Where would the Britney Spears, the Cold Plays, the 50 Cents all be if they didn’t have controversial, cool and talked about videos? Nothing much I imagine.

Now here’s the thing. A visual medium isn’t something negative. Visibility plays a big difference because sometimes you don’t really appreciate an artiste or a band till you really watch or see them in their live environment. Of course an intelligent and thought provoking video which actually has some link to the song or music at hand would make some sense.

With people courting the Internet more and more, visibility is an integral tool of communicating ones music to a larger segment. Problem is where do you draw the line? Where do you say is the music more important than our image? Or is the imagery we hope to use more significant than what we have to offer as individuals?

With all the religious wars, the civil and political turmoil booming in the world over, with corruption, injustice and societal degradation apparent in every corner of the world people have lost hope.

They have nothing to believe in, to hold onto. Therefore people really need to see to believe these days. Anyway… it’s a whole different thing listening to Strapping Young Lad or Slayer, but an entirely uncanny experience watching them perform live.

However the music industry has to provide a sufficient backdrop and a platform for artistes, helping to shape every part of the industry irrespective of colour, race, beliefs and demography with an infrastructure to take Sri Lankan originality to the world around us. Bands are doing it on their own.

It’s like a pack of hounds fighting over a very small bone. We need more labels, proper distribution channels and professional event management bodies because right now Heavy & Extreme Metal is in a very good place.

Sri Lankan music industry is in a rut and its time someone should do something productive about it. Artistes of all genres and styles are suffering as the music biz is being sodomised, Suresh added.

Suresh de Silva had told us in an earlier interview in May, 2006,

“It is the TV, the Radio and the Press what dictates to the masses what is popular and not. An average music fan will like only what he or she may be exposed to. The reason for this is the lack of proper infrastructure for Music in Sri Lanka. The decision makers in this country are either ignorant, blind or prejudicial over the types of music they deem ‘unfashionable’.

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Nana Mouskouri bids farewell with Athens concert

Nana Mouskouri has bid adieu to a remarkable half-century in music with a farewell concert in her native Greece at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens..

Fans filled the ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus on Wednesday evening to hear the 73-year-old songstress — one of the best-selling recording artists of all time — perform from her wide repertoire.

Hours earlier, the city of Athens bestowed its gold medal on Mouskouri, who has been on a worldwide farewell tour since she announced her plans to retire three years ago.

Born on the island of Crete, the bespectacled Mouskouri has sold more than 300 million records in French, English, Germany, Greek, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Hebrew and Japanese, her record company Universal says.

She was also engaged in humanitarian work, serving as a UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) ambassador, and served as a Greek member of the European Parliament in the 1990s.