Two assistants at a well stocked outlet of CDs and DVDs situated on Galle Road, Colpetty, where I sought to obtain a copy of Sunil Santha's CD put out by the SL Broadcasting Corporation bit their lips in contemplative thought and muttered to themselves, "Sunil Santha’s? No we don't have any in stock. We haven't even heard of him."

Some years ago on a jaunt in the dales of Welimada with rustic villagers, I wished to entertain my fellow travellers by playing a CD by Visharadha Amaradeva. "Aney, uncle, don't play Amaradeva. His songs induce sleep," I was told.

Now, these are the maestros who, together with Ananda Samarakoon, have been largely responsible for revamping Sinhala Music and weaning it away from the kindergarten stuff to give a new direction to music.

The bane of Sinhala music is the deterioration of standards because of the audio and video presenters who give the public in the name of music copious doses of hash which has neither melody nor lyrics worthy of any song writer and they are belted out with vigour and heavy breathing rather than with style and taste. These are the imitations of the new genre of Hindi music which has abandoned Naushad and Burman.

Tissa Abeysekera, who is an acknowledged authority on Sunil Santha and Sinhala Music, will state that although Sunil's songs like 'Olu Pipila' which touch on levity, he has produced many an opus like 'Rama/Seetha Kathandare' and 'Mey Gopalu Wanayey' Sunil's 'Wareng Aney Hramitiya' which defies rendering by any other mortal.

As I decried Tourism when it was initially mooted by my Guru, Anandatissa de Alwis, because it would eat into the very fabric of our culture and our unique ethos, I now change channels whenever the presenter chooses to give me false music which jars the timbre of my soul.