Welcome Letter 2019

Every year, the South-Asian A cappella circuit features a host of independently organized competitions across the country. These competitions feature the best of the best South-Asian A cappella teams competing for the title of champion. As of now, each competition manages its own application process, but the Association of South-Asian A cappella (ASA) is working on making that process easier for groups and competitions for next season. These competitions usually announce their application timelines and packets on their social media platforms, and the ASA Facebook page will make sure that it shares these announcements as well.

Along with these competitions, ASA hosts All-American Awaaz (A3), the National Championship of South-Asian A cappella. Some of the competitions in the circuit are selected on a year-by-year basis by the ASA board to be All-American Awaaz Bid Competitions, which means that participating in those competitions will make you eligible to qualify for A3! The exact process by which your group’s results in these bid competitions affects your chances of making it to A3 are described by the A3 Bid Point System, which describes the competition judging procedure and how your scoring affects your group’s A3 qualification (you can check out the latest published bid system here). The competitions that are selected as official A3 Bid Competitions are announced sometime in the late summer; once again, this will be announced on ASA social media platforms.

The bid competitions for 2018-19 were Jeena (Austin, TX), Anahat (Berkeley, CA), Sangeet Saagar (Raleigh, NC), Mehfil (Los Angeles, CA), Sahana (Los Angeles, CA), Gathe Raho (Iowa City, IA), and Awaazein (Dallas, TX). Note that these competitions were selected only for the 2018-19 season, and every year’s official bid competitions are announced in late summer.

Hopefully this helps your group get a better sense of the South-Asian A cappella circuit! Please make sure to follow us on our social media (Facebook, Instagram) as well as A3’s social media (Facebook, Instagram) to get regular updates as well. Along with the official ASA social media, I would also highly recommend joining the Network of Desi A cappella, which is ASA’s community forum for all things South-Asian A cappella. And of course, feel free to reach out to us at any time if you have any questions or suggestions about the circuit, the competitions, A3, or other general resources to help your group develop and grow.

Good luck for the upcoming years!