Shehan Karunatilaka interview: “Since the 2010s you had kids shooting hip-hop videos. Underground stuff”

Shehan Karunatilaka is lamenting the gradual dissolution of his band, Powercut Circus, a Sri Lankan “psychedelic trip-hop outfit.” “We were actually getting quite good – but then the guitarist became a DJ, the singer had a kid, and the bassist got too busy writing a novel…” The bassist, of course, was Karunatilaka, whose novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, a satirical (and often funny) afterlife-whodunnit set in the darkest days of Sri Lanka’s civil war, recently won literature’s biggest award, the Booker Prize.

The prize is life-changing – a promotion to Champions League literary standing – and it led the national news in Sri Lanka, where Karunatilaka was born and lives. His acceptance speech, delivered partly in both Sinhalese and Tamil (a pointedly inclusive gesture, albeit bemusing to the live BBC Radio 4 audience), expressed hope for a Sri Lanka “without corruption, cronyism and race-baiting,” one where future generations might file his book under ‘fantasy’ rather than political satire. The clip of this speech went viral across the island, greeted with delight by anti-government protesters, less so by the old guard of Sinhalese nationalists.

And yet, as Karunatilaka talks on Zoom from his study in Colombo, flanked by five guitars and a drum kit (the latter acquired during the country’s strict COVID-19 lockdown), you get a sense of regret. He’s delighted, of course, with literary success. But as he talks about his love of music, you sense he might just have swapped the Booker for an appearance on the Park Stage at Glastonbury. He has played and written about music for most of his life. And with a wild mane of hair, gathered into a bun for the Booker awards ceremony, he still looks very much the hip Sri Lankan rocker.

I ask where it began and he delivers me to the murky world of 80s Top of the Pops – Shakin’ Stevens, Adam Ant. “Shows were often broadcast months or even years late, so, when I was about 12, we had Sting at the Grammys and The Police getting inducted at the Brit Awards. And that was it for me… the music you first fall in love with. I can’t seem to wear The Police out, even if Sting has challenged my love over the years – that album with Shaggy, and the lute music. But then again, there’s The Soul Cages and Nothing Like the Sun. The Police have their five golden albums. And Sting, too.” Karunatilaka considers five the magic number of decent albums a band can record. He also reveres the number three – “that perfect combination of guitar, bass and drums … the trinity.” 

It wasn’t The Police, though, so much as “1990s grunge – Nirvana, Pearl Jam – the punk ethos” that inspired Karunatilaka to make music himself. That, and an introduction to hip-hop bands like Wu-Tang Clan. He was by then at college in New Zealand – his family temporarily relocated there during the worst days of the Sri Lankan civil war – and began playing in a succession of bands, writing songs and playing bass and guitar, “though I couldn’t play bass and sing at the same time like the master.” His first band was called Alice Dali – “Alice in Wonderland, Salvador Dali, LSD if you say the name quickly… one thing I would say about my bands is that the names were much cooler than the music.”

Returning after university to Sri Lanka – and starting a new band called Independent Square – he kept playing grunge and felt a part of Sri Lanka’s rock scene. “And there were some very good rock bands then, much better than us,” he says, “bands like Stigmata and Paranoid Earthling, both of whom are still going.” But, “most often Sri Lanka’s rock groups sound like covers bands.”

He thinks the problem with Sri Lankan, and indeed Asian, bands playing rock is “a question of accents. It’s the same with theatre. Do we speak or sing in American or British English?” He reckons the next generation, which grew up on hip-hop, solved things. “With hip-hop that question’s not there. People rap in their own language and accents, whether Sinhala or Tamil or English. It’s possible to incorporate Eastern rhythms even in the way you split the lines. It’s naturally suited to using local lingo and so it has a more original voice.”

You might draw parallels with Karunatilaka’s own writing here. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, like his first novel, Chinaman (a marvellously shaggy dog quest for a legendary cricketer), fizzes with the rhythms of Sri Lankan speech, infusing an energy and humour even when the material is as dark as the country’s civil war.

Karunatilaka recalls that hip-hop and EDM (electronic dance music) also revolutionised the nature of Colombo’s live music scene. “While the old rock bands could fill a bar, EDM events, like Pettah Interchange, would be huge, taking over big, spooky abandoned hotels around the Pettah Market, with DJs on all the different levels.”

The pandemic brought that to a close, but the EDM/hip-hop scene continued as it had begun, online where “since the 2010s you had kids shooting hip-hop videos. Underground stuff, talking about politics, rapping in both Sinhalese and Tamil. People like Drill Team and Zany Inzane in Sinhalese. Or Navz-47 and Shan Vincent de Paul in Tamil – and MIA in London. There’s a great funk band, too, called DotDotay, who I saw last week at Barefoot in Colombo, whose singer raps in Sinhalese. And I’ve recently discovered a project called Thattu Pattu – the phrase is part Tamil, part Sinhala – which promotes music from the fringes of Sri Lanka. They have great musicians, original thinking, and a combination of Sinhala and Tamil rhythms.” Thattu Pattu is a particularly good way into Sri Lankan music, introducing a roster of artists including OJ Da Tamil Rapper (from the tea plantation Tamil community), Divanka and Shivy (who use beats from a tractor generator) and Owl Tree-O (a moody trio that recall the gentler side of Massive Attack).

As those following the news will know, Sri Lanka has been in a near-constant state of upheaval over the past year, as government corruption and incompetence crashed the economy, creating drastic shortages. The movement for change is called Aragalaya (Struggle) and for several months it maintained a tented settlement on the Galle Face Green in Colombo. “Bands and DJs played there every night,” says Karunatilaka, “as the protests developed, before they took over the government buildings.” Sri Lanka’s protests continue. So too, does its music.   

Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is published by Sort of Books

This article originally appeared in the March 2023 issue of Songlines magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today