Biography of Singer Yohani – The Musical Sensation

The Musical Sensation

Yohani Diloka de Silva, who is popularly known as Yohani, is a singer, rapper, music producer, composer and songwriter from Sri Lanka. She is extremely popular on YouTube, Instagram and Tik Tok. If one asks what is the profession of Yohani, one can say that she is a singer, composer, songwriter, rapper, music producer and also a businesswoman engaged in exports and imports of musical instruments.

While exploring about Yohani we can easily come to know that Yohani attained global fame in the last year for singing the cover version of Manike Mage Hithe.

 As a singer Yohani has gained worldwide reputation primarily because of this number and the song needs to be extensively discussed in any authoritative biography of Yohani, which is sure to be written in the future.

Yohani, who is known as the ‘rap princess of Sri Lanka,’ began her career in music as a YouTuber and soon attained recognition with her rap cover of Deviyange Bare in 2018. 

Early Promise

Born on 30^th July 1993 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, the age of Yohani is 28 years. Yohani is the elder of the two sisters.  Yohani was born to the ex-Army officer Major General Prasanna de Silva and Dinithi de Silva; a former air hostess with Sri Lankan Airlines.

Yohani did her schooling from Vishakha Vidyalaya in Colombo and was very much involved in sports during her school days. Yohani was a swimmer, wushu fighter and water polo player during her school days. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Logistics Management and Professional Accounting from General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University in Colombo. Yohani followed it up with a master’s degree in accounting from CQUniversity Australia.

Yohani developed an interest in music from an early age. However, there was or is no professional musician in her family before her arrival on the music scene.  Yohani said that her grandfather used to dabble in music a bit. Her mother spotted her talent in music and encouraged Yohani to pursue her passion in music. She also put Yohani for piano lessons when Yohani was just a kid. Yohani said that she used to play trumpet and French horn in her school days and learnt to play guitar through YouTube.

Yohani has a YouTube channel since 2016 and till today it has 3.38 million subscribers. Yohani has achieved the distinction of becoming the first female singer from Sri Lanka to have so many subscribers on YouTube. In the initial stage of her career, Yohani sung a lot for commercials. She also began uploading cover versions of popular songs in her YouTube channel.

Her Big Break

Her musical career got a fillip in 2019 when she got associated with a record label in Sri Lanka named Petah Effect. Eventually Yohani got signed by Red Bull Records and in August 2020, her debut single named Aaye was launched. The song went on to attract more than 2.4 million views on YouTube. Aaye explored her personal journey; her experience in the industry and in the public eye. Besides singing the song, the music of the song Aaye was also composed by Yohani. The song was written by Dilanjan Seneviratne.

In the same year, she came up with three more singles – Sitha Dawuna, Rawwath Dasin, and Merry Christmas Baby. She also composed the music for Merry Christmas Baby.  In 2021, she began with a single Haal Massa Viyole Viyole. Besides singing the song, Yohani composed the music for Haal Massa Viyole Viyole.

The Song and the Star

Then came the much talked about Manike Mage Hithe in May 2021, which soon became a rage on social media platforms.

The global popularity of this simple love song in Singhalese language again proves that great music has a universal language of its own. The popularity of the song surprised Yohani who never expected her cover version of Manike Mage Hithe to be one of the viral tracks of the last year.

Here it deserves a mention that the original singer for this runway hit number is Satheeshan Rathnayaka. She joined Satheeshan in performing the cover version of the song, whose hugely popular and simple music was composed by Chamath Sangeeth and its lyrics was penned by Dulan ARX. The music video shows Yohani and Satheeshan in the background crooning the song.

Her YouTube video of Manike Mage Hithe cover song has attracted 200 million views till now and the song has been dubbed in many languages. As far as Indian languages go, the song has been dubbed in Telugu,  Tamil, Malayalam, Bengali,  Marathi, Kannada, Hindi, Bhojpuri, Assamese, Punjabi and Gujarati. Yohani herself sang the Tamil and Malayalam versions of the song and they went on YouTube in August 2021.

The musical success of Yohani in the last year didn’t finish with Manike Mage Hithe. During 2021 she also composed, wrote and sang Ithin Adare and composed and sang Moving On.

Bollywood Connection

The fame of Yohani has impacted Bollywood too. In the recent past, She was also seen sharing the Bigg Boss 15 stage with Salman Khan where she performed Manike Mage Hithe with the popular Bollywood star. She was also seen in a Colors TV quiz show named The Big Picture where she performed  Manike Mage Hithe with another Bollywood star, Ranveer Singh. She also had her first overseas tour in her music career in October 2021 when she toured India, where she got an overwhelming response.

In the last year, the celebrity singer also recorded her first Bollywood number for the film Shiddat, despite her problems with the Hindi language at that time.

She will also be heard singing in the Hindi version of Manike Mage Hithe in the upcoming Bollywood film Thank God, which features Ajay Devgn, Sidharth Malhotra and Rakul Preet Singh.

In 2021 only she was signed by Samsung as a brand ambassador for the Samsung Galaxy Z series. The net worth of Yohani, according to https://canbeelifestyle.com/yohani/ and also according to https://biooverview.com/yohani-net-worth/ is 1 million USD.

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