This morning, NPR’s weekly segment on the StoryCorps Project, featured a Sri Lankan couple speaking about the tsunami. I woke up to it and got a little misty eyed by the chemistry between the two (and the fact that their names rhyme).
As we approach the tsunami’s one-year anniversary, we bring you an interview between husband and wife Prianga and Eranga Pieris.
The couple, who currently live in New York, are originally from Sri Lanka, where more than 35,000 people died in the disaster.
They sing a song that Prianga wrote in honor of the sea and their beloved homeland. It tells the story of a fisherman — and the woman who loves him.
I don’t have much to say about it. I just thought some of you may appreciate it as much as I did. Listen.
thanks abhi – lovely melody and a charming couple.
for those TO-philes out there, here’s the link to Toronto’s own murmurs, a related (and earlier) project than storycorp
Wow.. It’s been a year already. 2005’s gone by so fast.
The couple and the melody are both charming and it’s interesting how this song’s tune sounds slightly similar to hawaiian and tongan songs.
abhi: thanks for sharing… i’m just recalling where i was when i learned of the tragedy a year ago..in cusco, peru..getting our news via cnn, and being glued and horrified at the enormous event… it is amazing and horrific at the number of natural disasters going on this year… i hope that 2006 is better for the world and the people in it…..
I hate to threadjack, but here’s another tear jerker (with a South Asian angle): http://www.downsyndromeresourcecenter.org/wsjarticle.html
(I think I sent this story in a few months back)
I knew when I read those names that they rang a bell….
Dan Barry wrote about them in one of his columns in the New York Times. They were performing at a clinic for recovering addicts.
“…
METROPOLITAN DESK
About New York; Carrying Tunes All the Way From Sri Lanka
Printer-Friendly Save Article By DAN BARRY (NYT) 793 words Published: March 3, 2004
THE recovering addicts and alcoholics settled into the community room at Coney Island Hospital’s substance-abuse clinic for a bit of what their counselors call socialization. More than a few kept their winter coats on, as if to signal an intention to leave at the first opportunity — even if this was a party. At the front sat two clients who had lived the last 365 days one day at a time, an achievement worthy of celebration. In the back was a cake, purchased from Costco for $14.99 and offering drizzled best wishes across its vanilla frosting. And unpacking a guitar and a tambourine were the featured performers: Eranga and Prianga.
A husband-and-wife singing act.
From Sri Lanka.
Hmmm, wondered Lisa Baron, the hospital’s chief psychologist. Is this a good match of audience and entertainment?
Dr. Baron had arranged for a late-morning performance through Hospital Audiences Inc., a nonprofit organization that sends entertainers to medical facilities and senior centers, group homes and nursing homes. The entertainers generally get $75 for an hour of work, and the sick and the fragile get an hour of welcome distraction.
It is a luck-of-the-draw arrangement — you get whatever act is available — but Hospital Audiences had provided her with good entertainers in the past. A musical magician. A very engaging poet. And, of course, that wonderful Russian circus act, the one with dogs leaping through hoops.
But Eranga and Prianga? Hmmm.
Eranga and Prianga Pieris, who were now setting up their sound system near the storage room, left Sri Lanka nearly 30 years ago to sing their way around the world. Their musical journey led, finally, to an apartment on the Lower East Side and a preponderance of bookings at libraries, schools and nursing homes.
Now and then they land bit parts on television. Prianga has played a nameless mechanic on ”The Sopranos” and a hotel clerk on ”Law and Order.” Eranga appeared once in a TV movie that starred Lucille Ball. But mostly they sing, tailoring their act to fit the audience; their Catskills shows include a Yiddish song or two.
Today, though, the emphasis would be more Caribbean, more Latin — with a touch of Sri Lankan schmaltz.
…”