Jungle Tide - Nimal Mendis

Jungle Tide by Nimal Mendis was used by Air Lanka during the 1980s as an inflight promotional song.
Nimal Mendis is a Sri Lankan singer and songwriter. He is one of a handful of Sri Lankan musicians to make it to the BBC television programme Top of the Pops in 1968.
Mendis was discovered in the late 1950s by Radio Ceylon, the oldest radio station in South Asia. The radio station dominated the airwaves in South Asia in the 1950s and 1960s-the station backed his songs from the start, including "Kandyan Express", turning them into hits in South Asia. People from all over the Indian sub-continent wrote in to Radio Ceylon requesting his songs.
Mendis has 22 songs published in Britain and has written music for films in Sri Lanka. "Kiss Kiss Kiss" was Nimal's first song that was recorded in Britain and sung by Mary Marshall on the Columbia label. "Kandyan Express", "Cherry Blossom Tree", "Oh My Lover", "Butterfly in the Rain", "Champagne Blues", and "Goodnight Kisses "' were number-one hits in Sri Lanka in the late fifties.
"Kandyan Dance", an instrumental, was his second piece in the West. Recorded by Friedel Berlipp and his Orchestra in Germany it went on to be number two on Radio Luxembourg. It was also released in the United States. Black Pearls & Green Diamonds has eight of Nimal's songs on an LP for Decca by One Two and Three, a folk group in Britain.
Mendis appeared on the popular BBC television music programme Top of the Pops with his singing partner Sandra Edema in 1968 as guest artists with his song "Feel like a Clown". They were also featured with the song on Beat Club in Germany that year. Eugene Wright bass player with the original Dave Brubeck Quartet arranged and recorded five of Nimal's songs only with him playing bass. He also arranged and produced one other song, "Singing Fish", with electric guitar, bass, and piano. They were sung by Sandra Edema.
In the 1970s, he recorded a number of songs in London. Many of these songs were of a spiritual nature. He made a twenty-minute audio documentary on the Way of the Cross called The Passion Report. Another audio documentary called Ferryman was about the tea estate worker and the farmer in Sri Lanka. It traces their history from the British colonial period. He also wrote Bread of Life for the Eucharistic Congress in Sri Lanka.
Mendis has written several memorable songs for Sri Lankan films. He wrote the song "Master Sir" in Sri Lanka for a film, Kalu Diya Dhahara ("A column of black water"). "Master Sir" is about colonial Sri Lanka; the words tell a story about the dignity of labour, a story not about wages but about social justice. The song was recorded both in English (by Mendis and Sandra Edema) and Sinhala (by Neville Fernando, with lyrics by Karunaratne Abeysekera) and has remained a hit in Sri Lanka for over thirty years.
His composition "Ganga Addara" ("By the Banks of the River"), written by Augustus Vinayagaratnam, and sung by Vijaya Kumaranatunga) for the film (directed by Sumitra Peiris) of the same name, is also a very popular song in Sri Lanka. "Ran Tikiri Sina" was written for the same film, and was also a hit. "Upul Nuwan" was another classic composed for the 1978 Lester James Peiris film White Flowers for the Dead. Indeed, all the songs he composed for Sinhala films have been popular with the public in Sri Lanka.
"Ran Tikiri Sina" and "Ganga Addara" lyrics were written by Augustus Vinayagaratnam, music provided by Nimal Mendis.
His Tsunami song has been recorded in Australia, Canada, the United States, Germany, Sri Lanka, and in the United Kingdom.
Source: Wikipedia