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Aroho Academy is proud to announce 'Aikatan 2023' – a Kolkata-based inter-school Bengali group singing competition to inspire young people to engage with Bengali music – an art form that has enriched our culture for generations.
We cordially invite schools to enable the participation of students from Classes 7 to 12 in this exciting competition.
"Aikatan 2023" will feature two rounds, with the first round requiring a video recorded audition uploaded to our website by 19th April.
The schools that proceed to the final round will participate in a day-long event on 24th June, where they will present their performances in front of a panel of esteemed judges.
The three winning schools will receive a rare opportunity to perform for a special audience at Aroho Academy's annual programme, scheduled to be held in July.
Aroho will also host music workshops in the three winning schools, involving the winning teams as well as 20 other students chosen from each school. The workshops will be supervised by Srikanta Acharya and other members of the Aroho faculty.
"Aikatan 2023" is an initiative born out of Aroho Academy's vision to foster young people's engagement with Bengali music. We strongly believe that this art form's multiple and diverse traditions deserve to be protected, preserved, and practiced. Through this competition, we aim to encourage students to engage with this art form, countering the general disconnect many of them feel with the Bengali language in the current climate.
Rules and regulations for participating in the preliminary phase of the competition:
1. Students from classes VII to classes XII can participate in the competition.
2. Each team should have minimum 10 to maximum 16 members.
3. The participants can take help of maximum three musical instruments (tanpura will not be considered as a separate musical instrument). Songs without rhythm will not be accepted. Participants playing the instruments can be excluded from the total number required for the group.
4. The three categories of competition are as follows –
a. Rabindra Sangeet / Nazrul Geeti / Atul Prasad / Rajinikanth / Dwijendra Geeti
b. Modern Bengali Songs (before the year 2000)
c. Modern Bengali Songs (after the year 2000)
5. The Aikatan, 2023 competition will be held in two phases The initial stage will be online. Each team participating at this stage will have to record their performance and upload it on this site by the 19th of April.
6. The video must be recorded in landscape mode. The recording should not have any kind of sound effects (reverb delay) etc. In any case where these are not followed, the performance will be disqualified from the competition.
**Preliminary results will be announced on the official Facebook page and website of Aroho. In addition, the selected candidates will also receive their results via email. The date for the preliminary results will be declared later.