The pop queen Tina Turner, who left beautiful memories that will never be forgotten in the art of pop music, passed away on May 24. (Sri Lanka Latest News)
Tina was eighty-four years old when she breathed her last.
Born on November 26, 1939, Tina was baptized in the Catholic Church with the name Anna Mae. According to her father’s family name, she was ‘Anna Mae Bullock’ (Anna Mae Bullock).
Anna had a very strange voice. It was a voice with a strange kind of deep sweetness, related to the art of opera music. Many people recognized that special voice only after she joined the church choir. The main priest, who led the hymns, always gave Anna, who was a girl, the place closest to the mic because the church worshipers loved her solemn voice.
Anna sang in church and became a popular singer at school. Anna, who made it clear that she has the ability to be a talented singer, was anxious to use the necessary means to develop it, while using her strong presentation skills as a weapon. It was during a slow journey that Ana was lucky enough to join the music group ‘The Kings of Rhythm’ in Louis.
‘The name Anna is not right. I name you ‘Tina’ for our team…’
The owner of the band ‘Ike Turner’ makes such a proposal to the 21-year-old young Anna. Anna, who was a lifetime member of ‘The Kings of Rhythm’, Tina like that. The song ‘Fool in Love’, which was a love-filled era song sung by Ike and Tina, is still popular all over the world, gained great popularity and occupied a significant place in the ‘Billboard’ indexes, and unexpectedly, they both won the Grammy Award.
Ike Turner, who had been married five times and then divorced, married Tina, who was many years younger than him, thinking that he would get all this because of the glory of Tina, who came to him as Anna. That’s how she became popular in pop music as Tina Turner.
Although she later separated from her abusive husband Ike, went on a solo journey as a popular celebrity, and married another man, this famous award-winning singer Tina did not change her last name ‘Turner’.
‘Tina Turner’ is a name among Sri Lankan fans. Sri Lankan fans recognize her precisely in the eighties when television was popular in Sri Lanka. That is through the music program Pop in Germany. Tina Turner’s deep voice, along with strange clothes and hairstyles, especially made men crazy.
Even after the age of fifty, Tina Turner took to the stage with young musicians and singers to perform like a naughty girl of eighteen and twenty, ‘I’m getting old because of my body. I am still very young at heart. Say I am eighty years old… No matter how old I get, that society will never allow me to surrender my life or age the way I want to…’
Tina Turner was a public figure until recently. Although smiling happily, there were many sad moments in the life of this pop queen who won 8 Grammy awards. Tina’s childhood was rough. In her first marriage, she had to spend her life not with Ike, who had dated her as a lover. During their marriage, Ike treated Tina like an animal. After that, the second marriage did not bring her the comfort she needed.
In the same way, Tina’s two sons were injured and died in car accidents at the age of two.
‘How did you bear the many sad happenings in life with so much patience…?’
A journalist asked Tina Turner in a public interview one day.
Do you follow Buddhism? Embrace Buddhism, when you believe in it you will get the answer to the question you asked me…’
Tina says that to the journalist in front of her with a very pleasant look on her face.
‘Did you embrace Buddhism to get rid of suffering?’
The journalist asks again.
You are completely wrong. I embraced Buddhism because its philosophy was pleasing to my heart. What is sadness? How to experience happiness? What is the clear meaning of abandonment? In the thoughts of how to control the mind for endurance, I developed my mind through Buddhism. Through the character of the Buddha, I learned all that…’
Even though she was dressed in a western style, Tina Turner expressed her thoughts like a Buddhist lady.
The saying of the village which is famous as ‘Hakke Buduras Bokke Dadamas’ comes to mind here. That’s because some famous people keep their stomachs and chests filled with sins and give false sermons. Even if it is a coincidence, Tina Turner preached to the journalist, not to such a false archetype. She had embraced Buddhism wholeheartedly. She embraced Buddhism in 1980. She had said several times that focusing on Buddhism in a very positive way was the center of her life. Tina’s media spokeswoman ‘Bernard Dohert’ told the media that Tina had made a big change in her life through Buddhism in discipline and good restraint.
Despite suffering from kidney problems, cancer and other ailments for many years, Tina had not raised a single complaint or complaint about it.
‘Only my body is sick and sad. My heart and soul are very healthy. I brought my mind to a very advanced place in happiness and comfort. I will not touch death till it comes to me. But I’m ready to die…’
Tina Turner said that in front of the public media very recently.
‘Actually, she died very peacefully. She spent the few hours before her death with amazing ease…’
Bernard Donnert made a statement to the media and said so with thin tears.
Until her death, Tina Werner, the queen of pop, was engaged in worship, almost always reciting Buddhist verses. Although many people who are famous artists hide from the public when they get sick like cancer, Tina Turner did not. She faced her illnesses very lightly and was amicable to the media and the world till the end.
Tina Turner, who retained her reputation as the Queen of Pop until her death, is not a wonderful example for Buddhists of the wonderful way she embraced Buddhism as a white woman and believed it correctly and developed her spirituality?
To be honest, the example given by this world famous woman to the world is priceless to the people who commit suicide, to the Buddhists who do not even go to a temple and do not understand the true value of Buddhism.
