Pratik and Shalaka’s Story

How did you meet?

We (Shalaka Joshi Keni & Pratik Keni) first crossed paths at Anahat at UC Berkeley in 2013, where both of our former teams, the University of Texas at Austin’s Hum A Cappella and the University of Washington’s Awaaz, were competing. Both UT Hum (Shalaka’s team) and UW Awaaz (Pratik’s team) were the last to leave the Berkeley campus on the Sunday after the competition, leading to the two groups hanging out. The funny part is Shalaka wasn’t actually at this spontaneous hangout, as she had gone to visit family. But that afternoon formed several new friendships, which would create the wonderful community of friends that still surrounds us today! 🥰

How did the a cappella circuit foster your connection?

When the Desi A cappella circuit began, both of us were alumni looking to find ways to stay involved. Starting in June 2016, Pratik joined ASA as a founding member of the All-American Awaaz (A3) 2017 Board and has continued to be an active member of the ASA org for almost 9 years. Shalaka joined Alumkaar, the newly created Desi A cappella alumni team in Fall 2016, as a founding member and performed with the group for the first two years of its existence. As a result, we both kept running into each other at A3 every year and crossing paths at several in-person and virtual community events. 7+ years later, it all eventually led to Pratik shooting his shot and reaching out to Shalaka during the pandemic shutdown for a virtual date in January 2021. With the support and encouragement of our families and mutual Desi A cappella friends, the rest is history!

How did you integrate music into your wedding?

We have both been very fortunate to grow up in very musical communities in Houston (Shalaka’s hometown) and Seattle (Pratik’s hometown) and make so many friends in the South Asian a cappella community over the years. Since music has been a very important part of our lives both individually and as a couple, we wanted to find creative ways to integrate it into every part of our wedding weekend.

We wanted an opportunity to perform ourselves, while also showcasing the talent of our families, family friends, and friends from different parts of our lives! So, we had many musical and dance performances at our Sangeet and Wedding Reception, and we specially curated playlists for each wedding event that we hosted. In particular, we wanted to share songs from a variety of languages, including our mother tongues, Marathi & Konkani. Also, we worked closely with our DJ, Sidd Kel (a long-time Desi A cappella community supporter), to execute our detailed musical vision for the entire wedding weekend. In fact, we specially requested him to produce a wedding mixtape for us, which included our favorite songs!

Did you have a particular musical vision for your wedding day? How did it come to life?

Yes, absolutely! We found a way to incorporate singing, especially a cappella, into two of our wedding events! First, at our Sangeet, we each performed songs that we used to sing while in college with our respective teams’ alumni. It was really special to get to revisit these arrangements with our friends from UT Hum and UW Awaaz since our college days! Secondly, at our Wedding Reception, after our grand entrance, we decided to open the program with a “First Song,” where we sang a duet to celebrate our first public moment as a married couple. Finally, at the Reception, we also organized all of our a cappella friends across many different teams to sing an arrangement of “Dil Chahta Hai,” which is one of our favorite Bollywood songs. We got over 25 people to participate in the group, and it was an acamazing experience to get everyone together to practice and perform like the good ol’ days in front of our wedding guests!

What would you say to someone considering joining a team and looking to foster new friendships and connections?

Joining a team was life-changing for us without even knowing it! If we hadn’t joined our respective teams and chosen to find ways to stay involved as alumni post-undergrad through ASA and Alumkaar, we may not have found our way to each other. Being on teams gave us some of our closest friendships that we still treasure to this day and built the amazing community and support system that surrounds us! So, we would strongly encourage anyone who is interested in Desi A cappella to put yourself out there by auditioning for a team, applying for a competition board, or getting involved in a cappella community events! You won’t regret it!

How has your a cappella team experience shaped your understanding of your culture and heritage?

Getting to perform the songs we grew up with and interpret them differently through unique and creative a cappella arrangements was one of the best parts of being on a Desi A cappella team. It enabled us to stay in touch with not only the South Asian and Western music we grew up with, but also the Hindustani classical vocal music both of us were fortunate to learn as kids in Houston and Seattle. Also, it’s been amazing to see how the circuit has expanded to include songs in different regional languages like Marathi, which both of us know/speak. Overall, this unique genre of Desi A cappella has been a wonderful artistic representation and expression of our bicultural identities as Desi Americans!

How do you both currently remain in touch with your musical roots or incorporate music into your everyday life, either together or separately?

Over the last 4+ years that we’ve been together, we’ve taken the opportunity to sing together as a couple and with our friends at our own wedding and several other weddings for our family members and friends. Shalaka also recently participated as a Soprano section lead in ASA’s first One Day Choir (ODC) event organized by the Desi Music Collective (ASA’s newest initiative) during A3 2025 weekend in San Francisco. We currently don’t sing as much as we’d both like to, but we hope to perform more together in the future.

That said, music continues to be a huge part of our lives. We are constantly sharing songs across many genres and languages with each other on Spotify and YouTube, and we love listening to new albums of our favorite artists together on long car rides. Also, especially after the pandemic, we’ve enjoyed going to live events together as often as possible to watch as many performing artists in-person as we can. Over the years, we’ve seen A.R. Rahman, Zakir Hussain, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Udit Narayan, Sonu Nigam, Shreya Ghoshal, Beyoncé, Tori Kelly, Usher, Ed Sheeran, and Pentatonix live in concert at beautiful venues across the country. We’ve also seen several Broadway musicals together, including Hamilton, Frozen, The Great Gatsby, Wicked, Aladdin, Into The Woods, and Back To The Future. 🎤

How do you plan to carry music throughout your lives together?

We hope to continue being passionate musical fans and performers in small and big ways throughout our lives. Whether we organize fun musical games, attend concerts, perform at family gatherings, or participate in events like ODCs by DMC, we’re aiming to stay involved in the music community at large as much as possible. Overall, we hope to share our voices wherever we can!
#HumariAwaaz 🎶