It was a stage set for all the fun and excitement equally for children, adults and elders with Carnatic music, Bharata Natyam, Karaoke singing, keyboard, Folk songs and dances, by the New England Tamil Sangam at the Keefe Technical School, Framingham, MA, on Saturday, April 12, 2008 to commemorate Tamil New year. It's always fun to watch the shows that has a relevance to one's cultural heritage. It was a short 2 and a half hour program with approximately 170 attending the event.

The program began with the traditional invocation to Goddess Tamil ( Tamil Thai Vazhthu) ,followed by Themmangu ( folk songs ) by Shoba Denzil. Uma Nellaiappan briefed the significance of Chithirai Vizha, to the audience. She also emceed the event along with Poongothai Govindaraj.

Carnatic music recital by students of Sandhya Sridhar set to the theme of the compositions that have spanned centuries starting from the 6th century to the modern era of colloquial Tamil, was the highlight of the evening. Mrs.Sandhya is a renowned carnatic musician in the area, teaching music for music's sake. "Music for me is that which stirs the soul of the listener and elevates the singer to higher planes," said Mrs.Sridhar.

The senior students of Sandhya Sridhar, Amritha Mangalat and Usha Natarajan awed the audience with their accent on the gamakas for the ancient Tamil composition of the sixth century by Ilango Adigal, while the juniors, Anjana Mangalat and Manasa Ravi sang "Alaipayuthe" with exquisite expressions and thalam. Meera Nair and Roshni Narasimhan's "Enna Thavam Seithanai", was absolutely graceful and reflected the nuances of the language that has evolved over the centuries. The final pair, Abhinaya and Upasana Iyengar kept the momentum going with "Vilayada Ithu Nerama." The program was an absolute delight to the music lovers.
 
Karaoke singing for the mellifluous melodies from the latest Tamil movies, by NETS executive member Raj Velmurugan and his wife Priya, Suja Seetharaman, Venkat Krishnan, Uma Shankar, Krish Velmurugan, Sudakar Sundarajan, Chenna kesavan and Padma Balaji enthralled the audience. Keyboard performance by Mrs.Vittobai Sathanandam was enchanting.

Like music, everyone enjoyed the classical dance performances by students of Sridevi Thirumalai, Akshaya Krishnaswamy, Prerana Purohit, Puja Kumar and Sangita Keshavan who presented the Bharata Natyam dance style with elegance. "I've been learning Bharata Natyam since I was six, from Sridevi Thirumalai," said Prerana Purohit whose talent was evident in her solo dance performance for the song "Venkatachala Nilayam".

Srilakshmi Vasan's dance for Bharathiar's song "Senthamizh Nadennum", was distinct, which made the audience shout "Once more !!" Dance medleys and dance for the Tamil movie songs choreographed and performed by Nivedha Baskaran and Krithika Baskaran, Saumita Rajeevan, Shreya, Kavya Bharathidasan and Aishwarya Balaji and Nivedha Kumar was very energetic and entertaining . The dancers of Kolattam, Sridevi Chennakesavan, Maha Krishna and Priya Palakkal , exhibited the traditional South Indian stick dance synchronizing with the song "Dhandia Attam Ada."

Dressed in colorful royal blue, orange and red costumes, the dancers dazzled the cheering crowd.

Vidhya Kalyanaraman, the treasurer of NETS and Ramesh Venkatramani , NETS executive member, together coordinated the program very well by sending out evite, communicating with the artists of the community to arrange for the music and dance programs and by sequencing the music files from the participants.
 
The remarkable commitment of the other members like Raj Velmurugan and Ilango Chinnasamy, managing the NETS website, Rama Sriram, taking care of publicizing the NETS events and sponsors, Malar Vizhi, Subha Suresh, Suresh Kumar and Chenna Kesavan taking care of the program guide, communications, shopping for the NETS events and videography has helped the success of all NETS events.

The organization is thankful to Thendral, a magazine for Tamils in North America, who had magnanimously offered the flyer design for the event this time too.

At the end, Vidhya Kalyanaraman offered vote of thanks for the evening's events and Balaji Sathanandam, NETS president presented the trophies to all the participants.

The association's next major event will be the Children's Day celebrations in November.

|