Global Hit

Violinist husband, poet wife weave music magic

By The World ⋅ March 17, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment
Play
Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3

Irish violinist Colm O'Riain and Sri Lankan poet Pireeni Sundaralingam (Photo courtesy: word & violin)

Lonny Shavelson profiles a unique husband and wife musical duo: an Irish violinist and a Sri Lankan Tamil poet. Their music is rooted in common experiences of exile and immigration.


Discussion

4 comments for “Violinist husband, poet wife weave music magic”

  • Anonymous

    Although I am sure it was for sake of time and narrative, I think it is important that The World correct their claim (via editing of Sundaralingum’s interview with narrative inserts) that it was the colonial experience that stripped the Tamil language from public use in Sri Lanka. This was a post-colonial development under the Singhalese majority government with the passage of the 1956 Sinhala Only Act that remains in effect unto this day.

    • Ananda Markalanda

      All Sri Lankans lived together happily for many many centuries. And it was not the Sinhala Only Act (with reasonable use of Tamil) that let many leave Sri Lanka. It was the self serving politicians and the absence of the rule of law which gave the rich the right to exploit the poor.
      One by one Burghers, Sinhalas and Tamils left the shores for better pastures.
      With all it’s resources our land is ruled by goons and political mafia who are dressed in pure white.

      Sad

      ananda

  • Anonymous

    Thanks for your important comment, Jimmie. I’m the poet featured in this piece. I have not yet heard the final cut of the interview; I will comment further once I have. In the meantime, however, I have to emphasize that during the interview I distinctly discussed the 1956 Sinhala Only Act as well as commenting several times on the roots of ethnic and cultural oppression and the impact of restricting the languages that may be spoken in a country. It would be a terrible irony if the BBC has edited this out.

  • Anonymous

    I listened to the story, and I am afraid the ‘terrible irony’ as you put it was indeed committed. Tragic, because it is so rare that people speaking a minority language get to be heard — and for once, the opportunity was there and yet the soul of the message, the soul of the speaker, was apparently edited out.
    The silencing of minority cultures is repeated over and over in one country after another. I am familiar with the discrimination in France against Breton, Occitan, Basque and other cultures spoken in areas incorporated into the French state. Since the French Revolution there has been an unrelenting effort to destroy them. French national-chauvinism at its worst. The supreme irony is that people who just want to be able to keep their language and culture alive are accused of … national-chauvinism (for protesting when the French majority destroys their culture!).
    I found the text extremely moving, and would love to hear more.