April 7, 2007

Fourth annual Norouz Festival draws record crowds

Over 20,000 people celebrate traditional Iranian New Year festival in Vasona Park

By Ali Abdollahi
Staff Writer

An estimated 22,000 people attended the fourth annual Norouz Festival at Vasona Park in Los Gatos on March 31 and April 1. The festival represents the culmination of the 13-day celebration of the Iranian New Year.

An estimated 22,000 people attended the fourth annual Norouz Festival at Vasona Park in Los Gatos on March 31 and April 1.

The Norouz (“new day”) holiday marking the beginning of the Iranian New Year is actually celebrated at the exact moment of spring equinox, which this year fell on March 20. The Norouz Festival at Vasona is annually held to celebrate the holiday of Sizdeh Bedar.

It has been a tradition for thousands of years for Persians and Iranians to spend this holiday enjoying themselves in a park or countryside. The word Sizdeh means “13,” and Bedar means “to get rid of,” so the day of celebration is meant to do away with the bad omens that surround the 13th day of the new year.

The Sizdeh Bedar holiday has been popularly celebrated at Vasona for the past 23 years according to official Los Gatos estimates. The large crowds of Iranian-Americans that would annually fill Vasona Park for the celebration grew to a record 10,000 attendees in 2000, with increased security, park repair and restoration, and traffic costs being borne by the city and county.

In 2003, the city and county approached Matt Kamkar, a member of the San Jose Planning Commission and director of the Iranian-American Chamber of Commerce for the Bay Area, to inquire about the ability of the Iranian-American community to begin bearing the costs of the annual event.

“This event is very important to the Iranian-American community of the Bay Area, because our children must be exposed to our rich culture and heritage and to our joyous celebrations in order to counteract the currently negative publicity prevalent in the media,” said Kamkar. “People as far south as Fresno and far north as Sacramento come to participate and enjoy the festivities.”

This year’s program included an elaborate stage production comprised of local amateurs as well as professional talent. Performers included world-renowned Persian pop music group Black Cats and Rushid. Other performers included children’s dances by Beshkan Dance Academy, Niosha Dance Academy and Sharzad Dance Academy, and a performance by the Ebrahimi Brothers with Jamal Vafai. “The entertainment value was incredible,” Kamkar said.

The festival also featured food booths providing traditional foods, desserts and refreshments from Bay Area Iranian establishments. Additional activities included a backgammon tournament, volleyball matches, soccer skills competitions, cultural exhibitions, and a raffle for two round-trip plane tickets to Iran.

While Kamkar said, “Ninety-nine percent of the people that talked to us loved the new format,” he acknowledged that there is a “vocal one percent” that still prefer the less formal Sizdeh Bedar celebrations that Vasona hosted in the past.

Said park patron Massy Jamali, “It’s a bit too corporate and sterile now. I think it was more in line with our traditions when it was just a large gathering of the community in an informal celebration.”

Despite some resistance to the more formal celebration, the record two-day turnout has renewed discussions among the Norouz Spring Festival Committee, the event’s organizing body, about charging attendees a cover fee beginning in 2008, according to Kamkar.

“The number of people who attended the festival the last four years has proved that, if we want to continue to grow and be successful, we have to think about charging an entrance fee,” said Kamkar. All proceeds from the Norouz Festival go toward the planning and building of an Iranian-American community center to serve the South Bay and Peninsula.