---

Sri Lankan Baila is a hybrid cultural form, a multi-cultural fusion of melodic, lyrical and dance elements. After offering a personal preface, studded with nuggets of Sri Lankan social history, the author explores the genre s sixteenth-century beginnings and then turns to its use in the Sri Lankan diaspora in the twenty-first century. A typology of meanings of the baila, to various groups, is developed and employed to analyze some extraordinarily candid interviews gleaned from members of the Sydney Sri Lankan diasporic community - about what baila means to them. The results show residual colonial prejudices in groups, to various degrees and in different ways. The children of the migrant generation provide refreshing views that suggest that old class differences may be fading away in the contemporary Australian diasporic context.

---

Gina Isméné Chitty B.Mus, F.T.C.L., L.R.S.M. Ph.D., completed her Ph.D. in Contemporary Music at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. She majored in pianoforte performance at the George Washington University in Washington D.C. A classical concert pianist and a composer, she is presently completimg a novel about her childhood in the tropics.

---