- Chai-Town
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Chai-Town is an all male South Asian a cappella group based in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Chai-Town specializes in mixing Indian and American songs and they are especially famous for their Antics on stage.
Chai-Town at Berkeley for Anahat 2008
Contents
History
During Fall of 2002, Anish Parikh and Rishi Jain were brought together by their love of music and from them was born, Chai-Town. Since then, Chai-Town has become one of the leading and recognized South Asian a cappella groups in the country.[1]
Performance
Shows
November 13, 2010 - Chai-Town placed 3rd at Anahat 2010.
April 10, 2010 - Chai-Town placed 3rd at Gathe Raho 2010.
March 8, 2010 - Chai-Town participated in the Will-TV A Cappella BEATdown with talented A Cappella groups like the Rip Chords, Girls Next Door, Tone Rangers, Blu Bop, Chandani, Femme Forte and Cut Time. Chai-Town was declared the overall winner of this competition by winning the online and phone voting while also being the judges choice[2].
January 22, 2010 - Chai-Town was featured at the Local Radio Station in Champaign, Illinois on Friday 22 January 2010[3]. Chai-Town performed at the Krannert Center for Performing Arts at the University of Illinois for Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration[4].
November 7, 2009 - Chai-Town placed 2nd place at Anahat 2009.
October 31, 2009 - Chai-Town won the Homegrown Talent Competition[5] at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign while competing with the likes of Rip Chords, Girls Next Door A Cappella[6], Dance 2XS, 3 Spot and a lot more.
April 13, 2009 - Chai-Town was awarded the Best Organization Award by the Asian American Cultural Center. Spring of 2009 has been very demanding for Chai-Town. They have performed at Marquette University, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Illinois State University, University of Missouri and have even taken part in the competition Gathe Raho, hosted by the University of Iowa along with numerous other performances on campus.
Chai-Town has been performing all over the country, from Washington DC to Chicago to Berkeley. One of the major events Chai-Town participates is the South-Asian a cappella competition called Anahat[7], hosted by University of California at Berkeley. Chai-Town has achieved first place twice in 2004 and 2007.
Chai-Town performs at all major events at UIUC organized by the Indian Students Association like India Night[8][9], which regularly attracts a large crowd. Every year Chai-Town also hosts its own show on Campus.
Style
Over the years, Chai-Town has gathered a good repertoire of songs. From Hit Indian movies like Lagaan and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, Chai-Town has covered Ghanan Ghanan and Mitwa respectively. Even covering English songs of Western Artists, like Stitched Up by John Mayer and Herbie Hancock. One of their most recent songs include Maula Mere Lele Meri Jaan from the Hit Indian movie Chak De India. Chai-Town has also done a Tamil song Pachchai Nirame, which has been composed by A.R. Rahman. Chai-Town has mixed many Indian songs with English songs. Some among the many are Because of You by Ne-Yo and Kya Mujhe Pyaar Hai from the movie Woh Lamhe, Nachange Saari Raat by Stereo Nation and Tempted To Touch by Rupee, Sexyback by Justin Timberlake and Jumma Chumma De De from the movie Hum.
Discography
Chai-Town has also released 2 Albums so far under STTM Productions[10] - Good Till The Last Drop and Arohonam.
Arohonam (2008): Produced by Jaimin Amin, Neal Srivastava & Arjun Venkataswamy
- Arohonam
- Teri Deewani
- Pachchai Nirame
- Maaeri
- Mohabbatein Medley
- Because of You / Kya Mujhe Pyaar Hain
- Mitwa
- Nachange Saari Raat / Tempted To Touch
- Sexyback / Jumma Chumma De De
Good Till The Last Drop (2006) : Produced by Anish Parikh & Rishi Jain
- Yeh Dosti/I'll Be There For You
- Ghanan Ghanan
- Mohabbatein Medley
- Insomniac
- Maine Pyaar Kiya / Kiss the Girl
- Still Haven't Found / Koi Mil Gaya
- Woh Chand Jaisi Ladki (Live)
- In the End
- Kal Ho Na Ho / Right Here Waiting For You
- The Lion Sleeps Tonight / Brown Eyed Girl
Members
The group holds auditions every semester and every semester it is a very grueling process and talent never seems to extinguish. The present Members are Jaison Alexander, Neesh Shah, Arindam Chakravartti, Bijoy Varghese, Vinay Srinivasan, Tejaswy Mallela, Sai Gudimella, Bharat Kusuma, Kevin Thomas, Sunil Thomas, Arun Kousik, Aalok Gandhi, Andy Castillo, Allen Mathew, and Vivek Thyagarajan.
Alumni: Anish Parikh, Rishi Jain, Ashish Shah, Sandip Shah, Aditya Nemlekar, Pritesh Patel, Ashwin Suresh, Rishin Pandya, Rahul Nayak, Paras Mehta, Gaurav Venkateswaran, Vikas Jain, Terrence Modugatham, Eric Jensen, Dome, Sean, Josh Cho, Jaimin Amin, Aditya Mehta, Ravi Jain, Vishal Desai, Harsh Shrivastava, Gaurav Dubey, Bharat Srikishan, Neal Srivastava, Siddhartha Raja, Akash Kushal, Danial Baweja, Suchun Shah, Raghu Kumar, Vikram Raghavan, Ibrahim Mekki, Saurabh Kukreti, Bimel Thomas, Samarth Bhaskar, Arjun Venkataswamy, Prashanth Venkataramanujam, Amandeep Gargi, Amit Vaishampayan, Shazad Ahmed, Gautam Srikishan, Manu Colacot, Eeshaan Roy.
References
- ^ Heritage celebration unites students, community Daily Ilini - May 4th, 2009
- ^ "A Cappella BEATdown". Will-TV Urbana/Champaign. March 8, 2010. http://www.will.illinois.edu/beatdown. Retrieved 2010-03-08.
- ^ "Live and Local with Kevin Kelly". Will FM 90.9. January 22, 2010. http://will.illinois.edu/liveandlocal/P10/. Retrieved 2010-01-22.
- ^ "Performs at the MLK Celebration". MLK Jr. Commemoration Planning Committee. January 23, 2010. http://illinois.edu/calendar/Calendar?ACTION=VIEW_EVENT&calId=7&skinId=1&DATE=1/23/2010&eventId=152178. Retrieved 2010-01-23.
- ^ "Chai-Town wins Illini Union Bookstore Talent Show". Daily Illini. October 31, 2009. http://www.dailyillini.com/news/campus/2009/10/31/chai-town-wins-illini-union-bookstore-talent-show. Retrieved 2009-10-31.
- ^ "Other ACappella Groups in the University of Illinois". Girls Next Door A Cappella. October 31, 2009. https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ro/www/GirlsNextDoor/links.html. Retrieved 2009-10-31.
- ^ "Anahat 2008 results". UC Berkeley Indus. November 21, 2008. http://ucberkeleyindus.com/anahat.html. Retrieved 2008-11-28.[dead link]
- ^ "Illinois: Dazzling 'India Nite 2008'". Team Mangalorean. April 6, 2008. http://mangalorean.com/news.php?newstype=broadcast&broadcastid=73654. Retrieved 2009-03-10.
- ^ "India Night 2007". Daijiworld. May 1, 2007. http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=32941&n_tit=News+headlines. Retrieved 2009-03-10.
- ^ "Recording Clients". STTM Productions. http://www.sttmproductions.com/page4.html. Retrieved 2009-03-10.
External links
Categories:- University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
- Collegiate a cappella groups
- Musical groups established in 2002
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