Colombo? Perera? Where are we again? The capital city is Colombo, which seems a little Latin America. So also does the very common last name Perera. But no, we are just off of India on a tropical island that is somewhere between developing and luxurious. The traffic in the city is horrible, but apparently the rest of the island holds a lot of great places to visit…we’d like to find out!
We jumped into this knowing that this is the first year for the Colombo Senses and Soul Music Festival. Their whole country is coming together and doing some really cool things. Seriously, there are some incredible musicians coming from here.
I think what’s most interesting around the world of music is the ability of almost every dialect to closely imitate the American pop sound. Switching between a Sri Lankan accent when addressing the crowd then cutting right into a spot-on Alicia Keys or Dave Matthews (albeit South African)…seems strange to me!
We spent a few days performing all over and Aaron and Chris judged a 2-day competition, each time, each even being more well-attended than the last. It seems that the government had promised the festival a grant and the incredible coordinators were still waiting on the payment, having put their whole lives on the line to make this happen! They really believe in this, so it is the least we can do to perform as many times as we can for them!
The last thing we did in Sri Lanka before saying goodbye to our new and wonderful friends was the closing ceremonies. It was a little last minute but they let us do a few songs before running to the busses and speeding to the airport. We jumped on stage and did a 2 minute soundcheck, shouted to the lighting guy to go crazy, and we hit it. To our wonderful surprise, this amazing outdoor stage and the lawn in front of it was packed with people! They had filed in from everywhere and we had an incredible (short) set! I’m glad we didn’t pass this one up! I hope we can come again soon, Sri Lanka!
Some highlights of this leg of the trip included a spot on their morning news (Good Morning Sri Lanka) with Mevan, a trip to A Museum, the packed SL club, a spot on MTV Sri Lanka, singing for the hotel staff at 5am when we got there, and the amazing volunteers!
Until next time…