Sri Lankan Jazz by Rukshan Perera

I decided to feature two original jazz songs in English by Sri Lankan singer Rukshan Perera in a blog post. Rukshan has been a member of the popular Sri Lankan bands “The Golden Chimes” and “The Super Golden Chimes” in the 1970s. Rukshan’s main instrument is the guitar, but he’s a multi-instrumentalist who is also an exceptional keyboardist. I will be embedding the songs “What Time Is It?” and “Cool Cats” from Rukshan Perera’s YouTube channel.

What Time Is It?

Rukshan describes this as a jazz funk song. This song features piano playing by Rukshan with accompaniment by the jazz fusion band Thriloka. The song opens with Rukshan playing only with his right hand. He then is joined with his left hand playing a chord featuring light accompaniment from the bass and drums. After the intro, the piano changes to a more energetic part and the whole band comes in. There is an interesting subtle electric guitar strumming part. Rukshan brings back the notes with both hands from the intro briefly twice where it’s just his piano. In parts of the song, Rukshan speaks with the instruments stopping.

There is a long upbeat piano solo. Following the piano solo, Rukshan does jazz scatting after the piano solo where he plays the piano and sings musical sounds to match the piano notes. He plays another solo and starts singing again. Rukshan does ad-lib singing relating to the time at the end. Rukshan sings soulfully. This song reminds me of the Chicago jazz rock song “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”. That song is also performed by a singing pianist (Robert Lamm) and I had featured it in my article about non-relationship rock songs.

Cool Cats

This video features the lyrics displayed. There is a prominent bass part by Ray Gomes in this song. This song is a tribute to singers George Benson and Ella Fitzgerald with Rukshan singing in praise of them. There is the lyric “I bow my head to my masters when I do my scat”. Rukshan performs with a guitar in the first half including a section where he does the scatting and guitar playing that George Benson does (Rukshan performed the piano version of scatting in the previous song) and just sings in the second half.

After Rukshan’s scat, we have Ricky Senn’s saxophone solo followed by Herschel Rodrigo’s piano solo. Rukshan sings another scat towards the end of the song. In this case, there are no guitar notes accompanying his singing. His scatting in the second scat is more intense and adventurous. I hear what seems to be African influences in this scat. I like how in this song Rukshan sings in the Sri Lankan/British pronunciations instead of the American pronunciations. It is even cooler as he’s a US citizen. Rukshan lived in the US from the 1980s to the 2000s. I both have an interest in the US and like the international approaches of doing things. I’m not a US citizen, but I’m also a Sri Lankan dual citizen like Rukshan.

These are two melodic jazz songs by Rukshan Perera. Rukshan showcases his creative singing, songwriting and instrumentation skills in these songs. There is a contrast in the songs as “What Time Is It?” is fast with “Cool Cats” being a slower ballad. Rukshan gave us two great universally accessible jazz songs.