Nayryz 2004 in Brooklyn, NY

Official web site of Nauryz 2004 celebration in Brooklyn, NY.

It was in Baku Restaurant (Neptune - Ocean). There were approx. 250 people from Kazakhstan, mostly Kazakhs. The restaurant is pretty large. There were several tables (for 12 persons?) arranged. We started at 5pm, then at 7pm children gave a little concert: singing Kazakh folk song, piano rendition of two Kazakh songs, dance (Kazakh and hip-hop), hula-hoop (this was especially impressive), guitar + vocal etc. After the break, we had adults singing and playing piano and guitar, Kobyz, violin. With exception of Chopin's piece and Shakira's hit song, everything esle was Kazakh music.

All performers live in US, some of them are or were professional musicians. Unfortunately, sound quality wasn't very good, especially the mics. Anyways, every performer made the best effort, and we could enjoy music. We, Kazakhs, can't get away partying without singing or playing dombra. It's not always on high professional level, but as long as it's good enough we are Ok :)

I've met quite a few people there, and hopefully made a couple of new friends. We stayed at our friends' home in Brooklyn. We had to go next day, but other Kazakhs were going to gather on Sun, March 21 somewhere in Queens to get to know each other better. The format of the celebration night wasn't very helpful in networking, because it was a little more formal that it should be, imho. We've had speeches of Kazakhstan's UN mission people in the beginning. Oh, by the way, there were mini-competitions for Mister and Miss Nauryz 2004 :)

Overall I liked it. I'm waiting for photo gallery :)