On the night of February 9, 2003, a couple of young enthusiastic men and women who called themselves ‘Amrakojon’ had organized a grand gala musical event featuring over hundred performers at Kresge Auditorium, MIT to celebrate thousand years of Bengali musical tradition. The program turned out to be a musical journey from the ‘dusty tunes of Bengal to today’s modern Bangla songs’ as their advertisement aptly read.

I reached the venue on the night of the event a little late only to find that the program has just started. Even as I stepped into the darkened auditorium, I could feel the barely controlled enthusiasm and excitement of the audience percolate through me. The program had been divided into four segments based on the period to which songs belonged. All the songs were sung by huge groups of men and women. The ladies brightly dressed in saries of different hues and colors and the men clad in traditional Kurta. The atmosphere was un-mistakenly Bengali, though the crowd of spectators contained a significant number of Americans. As the melodious voices of the members of the choir belting out one famous song after the other filled up the auditorium, I became nostalgic and actually felt for a brief moment that I was back in my native state of West Bengal listening to Bengali songs on the occasion of Poli Baisakh(Bengal New Year). In between each segments announcements were made regarding the following segment in detail both in Bengali and English.

The final segment was the children’s segment. In this segment, a group of talented, cherubic boys and girls continued with the musical tradition of the night, singing popular songs like ‘Amar Sabai Raja’ (we are all kings) and also songs directed by the famous music director Salil Choudhary. While another group of kids danced merrily to the songs wearing saris and kurta payjamas.

In fact, the program was punctuated through with traditional dances. It started with a dance puspa-anjali. Then, between segments, we got to see a beautiful Odisssi dance performed gracefully by a young girl and an equally graceful Kuchpudi performance. The dance performances were presented by students of Triveni School of Dance established by famous dancee Nina Gulati. The program came to an end with a final segment consisting of the Folk music, which was a huge success.

The program was a huge success and was a perfect example of how to preserve the roots of the Bangla culture thousands of miles away from the land of origin. I hope that ‘Amrakojon’ will soon come up with another such event.

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