EVERY GENRE PROJECT — May 1 — Baila
Genre of the Day — Baila 🇱🇰
Album of the Day — Baila Raajje by Desmond de Silva (ඩෙස්මන්ඩ් ද සිල්වා) (listed as 2014, unsure original release)
May 1, 2024
We are now in May! Meaning I’ve carried out this project for four months — one-third of a year! I’ve been seeing higher engagement than ever — somehow, I didn’t realize that the best way to promote your Sustack is within Substack. I’m incredibly grateful for anyone who has read any of my articles nerding out on obscure music and anyone who’s jumped on board to learn with me. Today, we sail our musical ship to Sri Lanka, the teardrop island sitting south of India with a fascinating history: Portuguese colonialism is nothing to celebrate, but those little colonizers loved to spread their musical traditions, and it has made for some pretty great sonic fusion that I’ve already experienced in this column.
Not everyone thinks baila is great, evidently: I probed online for some contemporary takes and feelings on baila, and found one exasperated Redditor protesting against his older relatives’ insistence on playing baila at parties. Generational differences and the younguns’ impulse to turn oldhead music off is a never-ending global struggle. But it’s a fascinating pendulum shift. Baila comes from hundreds of years of Sri Lanka’s diversity, which I was not aware of until researching today’s genre. Because it comes from the more commonly mixed-race lower class, it often was panned as ‘corrupted’ music, so the upper classes decades ago would certainly balk at listening to baila for reasons more to do with classism than familial-music-choice-burnout.
Under Portuguese colonial rule, several African slaves were brought to the island, and — you guessed it — the community brought traditional percussion and rhythms that served as the basis for today’s conglomerated genre. The Portuguese supplied the stringed instrumental elements like the mandolin and violin, and the vocals are distinctly Sri Lankan. Because it’s rhythmic and dance-based, baila is an easy genre to transpose onto whatever musical movement your heart desires. That’s caused a litany of spin offs like calypso baila, fanfare-esque papare baila with horns, and electronic baila. It’s commonly in that 6/8 time signature, which creates a unique bounce. It’s based on a few handfuls of familiar melodies — easily recognizable calls to the dancefloor.
Known as the king of baila, Desmond De Silva (notice that Portuguese last name?) was the ideal artist to start with, as RYM left me with slim pickings classification wise and I had to go rogue. It’s no wonder he’s the king, with his voice able to command so much joy over these grooves. Unfortunately, the supposedly mischievous lyrics definitional to baila lie beyond my knowledge almost as far as Sri Lanka lies from California. “Kakko Denna” sets the tone with shining horn breakdowns, undulating guitar melodies, and its irresistibly sunny sound, but the deep, watery drums underscore the Sri Lankan influence across these Portuguese melodies and African rhythms. This tripartite musical meeting of the minds plays sonic ideas off each other with an ease, pointing to baila’s long history. The upwards guitar swings and scintillating synths against the descending horn melodies of “Yaman Sopi” stands as evidence. No matter what the haters say, baila is able to live on through any era because of its embrace of new sounds, as in the digitized funkiness of “Kerilli Ran Kerilli”. I certainly feel the urge to dance hearing these songs, and perhaps if I get around to learning Sinhala, I’d have the urge to laugh at the humorous lyrics as well.
