By Sarah Hannan
This year, metal music in Sri Lanka has seen content churned at a rapid rate by many of the prominent bands. We see some pickup in the live music scene, with gigs taking place almost every fortnight. What is more exciting is to see that the original music scene is thriving even on digital platforms with singles, lyric videos, and music videos being generated and leaving fans with quality content to savour through this gloomy monsoon season.
Since releasing her debut album Fountain of Memory in 2019, Shehara Jayatilaka Napoleon has been working on promoting her music on streaming platforms and just last week she announced the dates for premiering her music video for the second song B-RUN-CH, which all fans are invited to setup notifications for on Friday, 28 October, at 8.30 p.m.
The Morning Brunch caught up with Shehara for a brief chat on how she has been faring amidst the economic crisis as a musician that makes original music and has self-funded her work over the past years.
“The biggest challenge we had to face while conceptualising and then arranging everything for the video shoot was the pandemic. Of course we had to be concerned for our health and making sure no band member or the crew was unwell, then finding the perfect day to start the shoots required a lot of planning,” Shehara noted.
Even amid such challenges, for Shehara making the music video for B-RUN-CH had become a positive reinforcement as she had the support of a talented production team which came together to complete a video shoot on two separate days.
“The location for the shoot was set in my home garden, and we only had to focus on getting the costumes and props ready. I had the fortune of working with Tai Hsin Shiek, who was there even during our meetings on conceptualising the video and creating the storyboard. What is more interesting is that we got to work with the renowned Mike Zimmer, who has directed music videos for the likes of Devin Townsend. He even makes a cameo appearance in the video,” Shehara elaborated.
The song B-RUN-CH written by Shehara Jayatilaka Napoleon and Tennyson Napoleon was performed by close friends of the duo that came together to support Shehara at the live concerts and even during the recording process. Shehara commissioned Kolitha Thenuwara from “Tenu Kala Piyasa” to perform the Nagaraksha dance, while Ramona of Halo did the make-up for the artists.