Association of South-Asian A Cappella | Organizing a Competition

Organizing a Competition

Sarang Joshi — Wed, 12 May 2021 16:58:09 +0000

So you want to put on a South-Asian a cappella competition? That’s music to our ears!

This packet outlines suggestions and guidelines from ASA on how to effectively organize a SA a cappella competition, starting from the planning process all the way through to the event.

The first (and most valuable) piece of this packet is a detailed timeline describing the tasks needed to organize a competition:

How to Organize a South-Asian A cappella Competition: Timeline

Here are some important points about this timeline:

The timeline starts at 1 year before the date of your competition. Along with this reference guide, at the top, the document contains an “Example Timeline” to put the timeline in more perspective, with a sample competition date of March 1. Please note that this is just a suggested timeline for a Spring season competition, and does not necessitate a start date of March 1.
The timeline is divided vertically roughly by task area. This is, once again, a suggested division of labor, and the tasks can be assigned and completed with any configuration of the board as you see fit. This will of course vary and depend on your board size and structure.
Each cell in the timeline has a few succinct bullet points to describe the task. Some of these (and soon all) have extended descriptions in the form of comments to further detail those points. You can identify cells that have extended descriptions by a little yellow triangle in the top-right corner of the cell.

The second piece of the packet, which is at the bottom of this page, is a detailed overview of the weekend of the competition. Once again, this is a basic outline, and as competition organizers, you have full creativity to make competition weekend unique for the teams attending!

Please note that this packet is a living document, which means that it will continue to be updated and improved over the coming weeks and months. Keep checking in on this document and ASA’s social media platforms for updates!

If you are interested in learning about how to satisfy the requirements to be an official A3 Bid Competition, please refer to ASA’s A3 Bid Competition Guidelines, located at https://desiacappella.org/competitions. When planning your competition, make sure that the bid competition guidelines are for the season you are planning to host the competition.

The Weekend of Competition

Friday

Afternoon–evening

Teams arrive

Have liaisons check in with teams
Teams are told when mixer starts, check IDs, give wristbands for weekend

Prep venue with mixer games

Home Recording

Sarang Joshi — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 02:06:07 +0000

Workshops

ASA Remote Recording Workshop, 11/22/2020: YouTube Recording

Resources

Music Publishing

Sarang Joshi — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 02:14:32 +0000

Hello South-Asian A Cappella community members! We wanted to reach out to the community and give an update on the issue we are currently facing about groups’ music being taken down from streaming platforms, such as Apple Music and Spotify.

As many of you already know, groups’ music taken down from streaming platforms is a result of major music labels filing copyright infringement complaints against a particular song in a medley. When one song receives a complaint, it is possible the entire album/EP is taken down as well.

What we have seen so far is that the majority of the copyright complaints filed are against songs that are licensed by major music labels in India. ASA has contacted labels such as Yash Raj Films, T-Series, and Sony regarding these issues but thus far we have only received a response from one label.

“[Label] has a niche catalogue and as producer of the films and songs we are very much concerned and protective of maintaining the originality of the song and are averse to the idea of any derivative of our original compositions. We believe any derivative dilutes the original creation.”

ASA will continue making efforts towards figuring out how groups in the United States can obtain cover/derivative licenses by pairing up with non-profit volunteer lawyers for the arts organizations. As this process continues, we wanted to give groups a few suggestions on how to release music during this time with low likelihood of removal.

Platforms

We strongly suggest releasing on YouTube and SoundCloud and promoting using those platforms as they are not as highly regulated and still have high visibility.

Content

Recording and releasing songs that have been declared without a license, or are part of the public domain, have no copyright claims and therefore cannot be taken down.
According to the label’s response above, focusing on non-medleys to specifically contain a song that meets the original artist’s intent may also have a low likelihood of removal. However, this is not guaranteed. We would like to hear from the community if you have released a song that follows these guidelines and still have faced a complaint.
As always, original music by an a cappella group does not face any copyright complaints from Indian music labels.

We understand the frustration that comes with not being able to showcase the spectacular music your group has worked so hard on and thank you for your patience during this time as ASA navigates these unfamiliar waters to help get your music back out there. We also that if any of you have contacts or information that can help us, please do not hesitate to reach out to us!

Welcome Letter 2019

Sarang Joshi — Sat, 27 Jul 2019 21:49:37 +0000

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!