Arts

Bernie’s journey to stardom

Bernadine Fernando was born in the coastal town of Negombo in June 1932. His family of devout Catholics ended their daily evening prayers with a couple of hymns. That is where his singing had its roots. 

Though that period in time is almost a forgotten one, some things from the past remain; as in Bernie, as his friends and family call him.

After some searching, The Sunday Leader found Bernie Fernando, musician, singer and song writer of years gone by. Wasting no time we got down to tracing his musical past to find out what it was like to be an artist in ‘the good old days.’ Comfortably retired now, he recalls that most of the people from that era could really ‘sing.’ Bernie himself is a master of harmony be it tenor, alto, bass or counter harmony. This is his story.  

Bernie was part of the hit group The Fernando Trio which became the Fernando Duo and then finally settled with the band Amigos Romanticas (Romantic Friends), singing English, Paraguan, Spanish and Mexican songs far and wide across the island. 

How did it all begin? The start of his musical journey is fuzzy but he explained, “I don’t know how I began group singing but I know my choir master picked my voice out from the rest because I could easily pick up, be it melody or any harmony. Bernie received his education at St. Mary’s College Negombo and by participating in the church choir his singing improved, but there was no special training.

In the blood

Although there was never any professional guidance as such, Bernie says music was in his blood at a tender age and having a musical family getting together off and on in the evenings for singing sessions certainly helped.  

While he practiced and sang at every opportunity he got, Bernie spent much of his time teaching youngsters to sing. He trained the students of St. Peters Boy’s School in Negombo to sing in three part harmony which was arranged by Bernie himself and they went on to win the second place in a Western Province Catholic schools singing competition of religious songs. That was in the mid ’50s when Bernie was around 20 years.  

Bernie entered the golden age of his career with the start of the group, The Fernando Trio, led by Neville Fernando who  was related to Bernie, together with Meril, a friend of theirs also from Negombo. 

The trio seemed to click very well. They have had several opportunities to sing at cabarets and stage performances, he recalls. “We were all very close, and had no trouble harmonising as Neville and I could sing any harmony on our own.” They went on to sing Mexican and Western songs in three part harmony, something that was unheard of at the time and became pioneers and over time, legends for their music.

But as with most big bands, changes took place with the departure of Neville who started his own band Los Cabelloros. Meril and Bernie continued as The Fernando Duo, travelling and performing extensively across the country.

New band

It was in mid 1963 that Amigos Romanticas was formed with the addition of rhythm guitarist Clifford Perera who sang bass and lead guitarist Kingsley Perera who sang melody and alto. The year 1964 saw the entry of Nelu Fernando to the group who played the piano, the organ or the melodica (which ever was available). Nelu’s playing of the piano gave the added effect of the harp. Hector Wanigasekera played the electric bass guitar.  

After a good run of performing and touring the country, disaster struck the band. Kingsley Perera died in a tragic accident and soon after Hector Wanigasekera left the band. But the band bounced back taking on Nissanka Wimalasooriya of Wheels Combo to take Hector’s place and Terry Fernando to fill in Kingsley’s spot.

In August 1968 Meril and Bernie had the opportunity of going to Bangalore to sing with Nissanka’s band who had got a contract to play there. The other members of the Amigos couldn’t make it due to inability of getting leave.  

Soon the group decided to drop Romanticas from their band name and went simply as Amigos.   

Bernie recalls how Neville was a ‘genius’ on the guitar and the same with Nelu on the piano. He said, “We were a group of versatile singers and musicians.”  

It was thought that Amigos Romanticas were the pioneers in Sinhala harmonizing but Bernie dispels that stating, “It was Los Cabelleros who started that fashion, they sang Udarata Menike which was a hit. We also did some Sinhala songs in harmony.” Three of these were composed and arranged by Bernie.

Big break

The big break came when Amigos recorded their first album in 1968. According to Bernie, it was tough times back in the ’60s and not easy to get a recording contract. But thanks to Saraswathie Studios they were finally able to record.  

“We had to sing in the studio with the orchestra. I remember we got the tracks done in our allotted eight hours.” An unbelievable feat but they somehow managed it. And what came out of the hard work was the four-track album, Ran Ethana which was composed and arranged by Bernie while lyrics were written by his wife Hema Fernando and Nissanka took care of the orchestral music. 

The group went on to achieve quite a lot in their heyday. According to Bernie, quality of their voices and harmony arrangement done by him contributed to achieving Grade ‘A’ category in the English National Service of the Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation and the group was permitted to include one Sinhala song in every 15 minute programme given to them. 

It’s been an incredible journey for Bernie who has since been invited on two special occasions to sing with his trained choir at St. Lucia’s Cathedral, Kotahena.

Father Benedict Joseph who was in charge of Joeneth Studio had invited Bernie’s choir for recordings on several occasions.

Much success

Bernie’s career and leadership in song was not just confined to the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. On  December 22, 1996 the Sinhala Choir of Dehiwela Parish trained by Bernie won First Place in an All Island Carol Competition. (See picture showing Bernie receiving the award from then Prime Minister Srimavo Bandaranaike). Apart from the set hymn, the lyrics, melody and harmony arrangements were done by Bernie himself.   

Bernie says the practice of singing hymns at the end of the family’s daily routine of evening prayers during his tender years continued with his own children as well. That is where he had started to teach his children to sing in harmony Sinhala and English hymns before they went on to sing other songs, even a couple of Paraguan songs.

He says, as time went by they were capable of harmonising on their own. He said, “We were singing at home. Music was all around us and so we were immersed in it and even though much has changed over the years – we are still a musical family.” 

And the generation of music continued through his son Duminda Fernando who went on to become a professional vocalist after winning the Star Search 2000 talent contest in 1994.

More than memories

Having retired to a quiet life of a parishioner of St. Thomas’ Church Kotte, he sings with the Men’s Choir. Bernie has more than just memories of a time gone by. Bernie has a collection of Sinhala original carols and hymns with his own compositions and musical arrangements. “It’s a little too late for me to train people now and release something on my own. I will make them available to an interested recording label or artist who can buy it off me at a reasonable price,” said Bernie with a smile.  

Though Bernadine Fernando’s group is no longer together, each going their separate ways over the years, the spirit and memories live on in their music.

First-timer nominated for Orange

Author Samantha Harvey has been short-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction for her debut novel.

Harvey, whose book The Wilderness tells the story of a man suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, is nominated alongside five other writers.

Irishwoman Deirdre Madden is the only fiction writer to have made the shortlist previously, in 1997.

The prize, which recognises the work of fiction written by women around the world, will be announced on  June 3.

The winner of the 14th prize will receive a cheque for £30,000 and a bronze statue called the Bessie at a ceremony in London’s Royal Festival Hall.

Sweeping tale

The other authors on the shortlist are US writer Ellen Feldman, with her story of race and crime in 1930s Alabama.

US writers Marilynne Robinson for Home and Samantha Hunt for The Invention Of Everything Else have also been nominated, alongside Pakistan-born novelist Kamila Shamsie for Burnt Shadows, which encompasses World War II to the present day.

Shamsie’s book will be available to download for free for 24 hours for iPhone users via iTunes from  April 22. Broadcaster Fi Glover, head of this year’s judging panel, said whittling down the contenders to the final six “was far harder than I had imagined.”

“We all left the judging room proud of the list we had chosen,” she added.

Bookmakers have installed Feldman as the favourite to win with her novel Scottsboro.

Last year’s recipient of the prize was Rose Tremain for her novel The Road Home. Previous winners have included Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy and the late Canadian author Carol Shields.

Poetic account of a nation’s troubled awakening

Yasmine Gooneratne, Virago (Little, Brown)

Reviewed by Val Nolan, in The Sunday Business Post,  February 22, 2009

When Sri Lanka or Ceylon, as it then was, was granted independence in 1948, the event was regarded by its middle classes with a mixture of satisfaction and foreboding.  As the British administration was replaced with home-grown public school and university men, many expected the nation to remain largely unchanged.  Not so the heroines of Yasmine Gooneratne’s sweeping novel.

Scions of a highly ambitious family attempting to balance social and political aspirations against the ignominy of  scandal, cousins Latha and Tsunami grow up to be quite different people:  the former soothes and charms (Latha is a Sinhalese word for harmony  and delight, while the latter grows up gregarious and self-assured.

While the nation’s new leaders battle each other for supremacy,  these two young women discover that life in a free country at the beginning of a new age means every possibility is suddenly within reach. Youth, energy and idealism are no longer to be frowned upon. They will, in fact, soon come to define the new Sri Lanka.

A story of change and transformation, The Sweet And Simple Kind is also a tale of kin and obligation, with both the sins and the    desires of the older generation visited upon their headstrong children.

The possibilities of marriage weigh heavily on the girls throughout, sound matches being the bedrock of Sri Lankan society at the time and suitors come and go with all the mannered insecurities of a Jane Austen misadventure.

Parental pressures define these episodes, and there is no small measure of comedy to be found in their reaction to unsuitable affairs, though in the end it is poetry and politics that truly win the hearts of the girls.

No surprise, so, that Gooneratne is an acclaimed editor and academic – who specialises in Commonwealth writing – and the author of more than 20 books of fiction, criticism and poetry. She surveys Sri Lanka’s post-independence tumults with an authenticity earned through long years at the heart of that small but precocious nation’s literature and culture.

Her novel reveals uncomfortable truths about the class structure of the country, the unpleasantness of a caste system which, as in India, survived the colonial modernisation visited upon Ceylon by the British Empire.

Casual racism, levelled mainly against those of Tamil blood, is rampant. Even at their supposedly enlightened university scenes drawing on the author’s own experience  in the post-independence milieu, Latha and Tsunami experience the cold face of prejudice and hate.

The implicit social commentary Gooneratne successfully pursues here raises The Sweet And Simple Kind above  the level of simple chick-lit that its cover’s bright pink gaudiness initially suggests. It is, as the sub-title suggests, ‘A Novel of Sri Lanka’, of its many wonders as well as the darkest reaches of its soul.

Fittingly, the author’s prose, clipped and unencumbered by distracting flourish, is never less than readable, with hundreds of pages passing beneath the reader’s fingers almost without notice.

For the most part, Gooneratne manages to skirt the trap of sentimentality.  Her characters run the gauntlet from hope to love to misery and back again  with a kind of steely determination to not be broken by their trials, a commendable metaphor for their island home..

Skillfully blending together fact and fiction, Gooneratne has set this epic saga against the best and worst that the newly independent Sri Lanka has to offer. Sensitively observed, The Sweet And Simple Kind is at once a bold novel of national consciousness, and a tender tale of family and friendship.

(Val Nolan teaches contemporary literature at NUI, Galway.)

— The Sunday Business Post