Boston Bhangra - Looking for Judges

[hardeep_singh]

Have you seen rosters these days? There are like 29 people on them from 6-7 different teams, and potentially 2-3 countries.

LOL so true, rosters are gettin crazy these days

i won't be satisfied until every team on the circuit has a dedicated dhad player, at least 4 people to tie paggs, and a bibi or 2 playin the kharra (clay pot played using metal ring)

 

[Saab]

Saab bhai, the organizer already mentioned that the dancer must be 1 year removed from dancing in order to have no conflicts of interest. 1 year is fair. It keeps out the current dancers, and recently retired, but keeps in the good judges who stopped dancing or being strongly affiliated with any one team. Like govind, pashi, etc.

My mistake. Thats actually pretty fair. Probably wont get rid of all the conflict your wanting, but it at least allows for professionalism to manifest itself for both comp and judge.

 

[Saab]

Have you seen rosters these days? There are like 29 people on them from 6-7 different teams, and potentially 2-3 countries.

LOL so true, rosters are gettin crazy these days

i won't be satisfied until every team on the circuit has a dedicated dhad player, at least 4 people to tie paggs, and a bibi or 2 playin the kharra (clay pot played using metal ring)

I wont be satisfied until every team has one person who google maps the closest taco bell, and another whos job is to procure that taco bell.

 

[hardeep_singh]

Have you seen rosters these days? There are like 29 people on them from 6-7 different teams, and potentially 2-3 countries.

LOL so true, rosters are gettin crazy these days

i won't be satisfied until every team on the circuit has a dedicated dhad player, at least 4 people to tie paggs, and a bibi or 2 playin the kharra (clay pot played using metal ring)

I wont be satisfied until every team has one person who google maps the closest taco bell, and another whos job is to procure that taco bell.

taco bell + bhangra + alcohol.....there's no way that can result in anything good

 

[campy614]

Have you seen rosters these days? There are like 29 people on them from 6-7 different teams, and potentially 2-3 countries.

LOL so true, rosters are gettin crazy these days

i won't be satisfied until every team on the circuit has a dedicated dhad player, at least 4 people to tie paggs, and a bibi or 2 playin the kharra (clay pot played using metal ring)

I wont be satisfied until every team has one person who google maps the closest taco bell, and another whos job is to procure that taco bell.

taco bell + bhangra + alcohol.....there's no way that can result in anything good

On what planet are you on? Sounds like a party to me!!!

 

[GSingh]

ew. taco bell.

 

[Boston Bhangra]

Additional comments:
1) We can make exceptions to these rules, but for the most part, we try to stick by them. All of our previous judges have been of Punjabi descent. We are looking for judges that understand Punjabi. So if you are Gujrati, but can speak and understand Punjabi, that works for us.
2) As for affiliations, we are going to use a blend of judges, both male and female, that have and haven't had affiliations. We try to keep it as diverse a panel as possible to avoid biases.

We take judging very seriously and want to select the most diverse group of judges as we expect our teams to be just as diverse. Understanding Punjabi is CRITICAL for us, as is having taught Bhangra, and not being too closely tied to any team/association.

Sincerely,
Boston Bhangra, Inc

 

[Badwal]

Why is everyone getting so horny, relax :\

 

[Nikhil]

Cool thanks for the explanation

 

[monisingh]

would they allow a 16 year old to be a judge......

 

[dj2nyce]

2)Nice.

 

[sartajjudge]

I've been a Judge since December 24, 1988.

You've also been a moron since then.

STFU.

 

[HarmanSingh]

To All:
We are currently looking for Bhangra judges for the Boston Bhangra Competition 2011. We have a handful of candidates already, but we're looking to add more credentialed individuals.
If you want to be a judge, please contact us @ info@bostonbhangra.com.

Several credentials that we look for:
1) Judges must be Punjabi
2) Judges must have past experience in dancing/teaching Bhangra
3) Judges must NOT be affiliated to any other Bhangra team

Sincerely,
Boston Bhangra, Inc

1) At least one judge should be punjabi, I dont know about the board. I can't understand punjabi, but I understand the relevance of gimmicks. You just have to listen to the crowd(they go wild). Gimmicks shouldn't be measured by there relevance to the lyrics, but on crowd effect. Every judge judges with that somewhat in mind(usually this goes hand-in-hand). I can see where it might be necessary song selection, but I dont see this as a competition favor live boliyan or live teams.

2)Nice. This is a huge plus. You should also consider the relevancy of when they danced(Captain of College team, 1967-1971 Polytechnical St. Marys College whatever whatever) and there views of past topics of relevance(OMG WOMEN DANCE...OMG OMG OMG) and newer topics(I saw that gimmick before. Comparing all-guy vs all girl(OMG THEY DANCE) vs coed).

3) This is slightly ridiculous. I commend you for trying, but by asking btf, your asking a group of people who have danced within the past four years or are affiliated with some team in that time span. You would have had better results on craigslist. There are VERY few people here that could fill all three, as this place not only pulls people together, but your already exposed to prior team content. Have you seen rosters these days? There are like 29 people on them from 6-7 different teams, and potentially 2-3 countries.


What I am taking from this is not that your asking BTF, but are rather telling us thats what your looking forward and are trying to get. Honestly, there might be the odd lurker here who MIGHT be able to fill your request....

On a side note, all the "Great" bhangra dancers from back in the past are usually associated with some academy, or get asked to guest teach. Established teams usually use these resources. So even if you wanted to get the dude doing 64 beats of jugni and in that grimy youtube video from '69, hes probably apart of some academy too.

Good luck.

You can't understand the relevance of a gimmick based off of crowd noise. Most hometown teams get much more support throughout an entire routine than a lesser known team from out of state/the country. If you are going solely based off of the audience's reaction, that is a terrible (and unfair) way to judge. Also, I don't see how you would be able to judge a singer's pronunciation/understand the sher/see why a team put certain moves in certain places if you don't understand Punjabi.

 

[siddyp]

To All:
We are currently looking for Bhangra judges for the Boston Bhangra Competition 2011. We have a handful of candidates already, but we're looking to add more credentialed individuals.
If you want to be a judge, please contact us @ info@bostonbhangra.com.

Several credentials that we look for:
1) Judges must be Punjabi
2) Judges must have past experience in dancing/teaching Bhangra
3) Judges must NOT be affiliated to any other Bhangra team

Sincerely,
Boston Bhangra, Inc

1) At least one judge should be punjabi, I dont know about the board. I can't understand punjabi, but I understand the relevance of gimmicks. You just have to listen to the crowd(they go wild). Gimmicks shouldn't be measured by there relevance to the lyrics, but on crowd effect. Every judge judges with that somewhat in mind(usually this goes hand-in-hand). I can see where it might be necessary song selection, but I dont see this as a competition favor live boliyan or live teams.

2)Nice. This is a huge plus. You should also consider the relevancy of when they danced(Captain of College team, 1967-1971 Polytechnical St. Marys College whatever whatever) and there views of past topics of relevance(OMG WOMEN DANCE...OMG OMG OMG) and newer topics(I saw that gimmick before. Comparing all-guy vs all girl(OMG THEY DANCE) vs coed).

3) This is slightly ridiculous. I commend you for trying, but by asking btf, your asking a group of people who have danced within the past four years or are affiliated with some team in that time span. You would have had better results on craigslist. There are VERY few people here that could fill all three, as this place not only pulls people together, but your already exposed to prior team content. Have you seen rosters these days? There are like 29 people on them from 6-7 different teams, and potentially 2-3 countries.


What I am taking from this is not that your asking BTF, but are rather telling us thats what your looking forward and are trying to get. Honestly, there might be the odd lurker here who MIGHT be able to fill your request....

On a side note, all the "Great" bhangra dancers from back in the past are usually associated with some academy, or get asked to guest teach. Established teams usually use these resources. So even if you wanted to get the dude doing 64 beats of jugni and in that grimy youtube video from '69, hes probably apart of some academy too.

Good luck.

You can't understand the relevance of a gimmick based off of crowd noise. Most hometown teams get much more support throughout an entire routine than a lesser known team from out of state/the country. If you are going solely based off of the audience's reaction, that is a terrible (and unfair) way to judge. Also, I don't see how you would be able to judge a singer's pronunciation/understand the sher/see why a team put certain moves in certain places if you don't understand Punjabi.

I agree on the hometown team getting more support regardless of any gimmick or dancing. but if a gimmick doesn't get the crowd to react, why should a team get a + for the gimmick from a judge that 'understands' what they did? If the idea is to entertain the audience and the team isn't succeeding at doing that with their gimmick, then what does it matter if you understand what's happening or not? The couple instances where I can agree with you for example is when APD/KJ hugged each other while having Yaar Anmulley in their mix and the crowd reacted! Someone who doesn't understand punjabi would have trouble understanding what's happening. But the dupatta gimmicks, the farm related gimmicks, the girl/guy interaction gimmicks, should be easily recognizable for any judge who has been around bhangra for some time.

Even after tallying of points, when deciding who had the best performance of the night: one team danced for 8 strait mins, vs a team that had a 15 second break in the middle for a gimmick. But Does a gimmick flow in the routine? or is it just added in and forced? Was it executed seamlessly? or was it sloppy? Was it in good taste? or was it just random? Did it bring momentum to the performance? or did it stop what the team had going? All of these points IMO should be assessed when judging a gimmick. I personally do not believe you have to understand punjabi to be able judge the 'performance' aspects of the gimmick.

 

[HarmanSingh]

To All:
We are currently looking for Bhangra judges for the Boston Bhangra Competition 2011. We have a handful of candidates already, but we're looking to add more credentialed individuals.
If you want to be a judge, please contact us @ info@bostonbhangra.com.

Several credentials that we look for:
1) Judges must be Punjabi
2) Judges must have past experience in dancing/teaching Bhangra
3) Judges must NOT be affiliated to any other Bhangra team

Sincerely,
Boston Bhangra, Inc

1) At least one judge should be punjabi, I dont know about the board. I can't understand punjabi, but I understand the relevance of gimmicks. You just have to listen to the crowd(they go wild). Gimmicks shouldn't be measured by there relevance to the lyrics, but on crowd effect. Every judge judges with that somewhat in mind(usually this goes hand-in-hand). I can see where it might be necessary song selection, but I dont see this as a competition favor live boliyan or live teams.

2)Nice. This is a huge plus. You should also consider the relevancy of when they danced(Captain of College team, 1967-1971 Polytechnical St. Marys College whatever whatever) and there views of past topics of relevance(OMG WOMEN DANCE...OMG OMG OMG) and newer topics(I saw that gimmick before. Comparing all-guy vs all girl(OMG THEY DANCE) vs coed).

3) This is slightly ridiculous. I commend you for trying, but by asking btf, your asking a group of people who have danced within the past four years or are affiliated with some team in that time span. You would have had better results on craigslist. There are VERY few people here that could fill all three, as this place not only pulls people together, but your already exposed to prior team content. Have you seen rosters these days? There are like 29 people on them from 6-7 different teams, and potentially 2-3 countries.


What I am taking from this is not that your asking BTF, but are rather telling us thats what your looking forward and are trying to get. Honestly, there might be the odd lurker here who MIGHT be able to fill your request....

On a side note, all the "Great" bhangra dancers from back in the past are usually associated with some academy, or get asked to guest teach. Established teams usually use these resources. So even if you wanted to get the dude doing 64 beats of jugni and in that grimy youtube video from '69, hes probably apart of some academy too.

Good luck.

You can't understand the relevance of a gimmick based off of crowd noise. Most hometown teams get much more support throughout an entire routine than a lesser known team from out of state/the country. If you are going solely based off of the audience's reaction, that is a terrible (and unfair) way to judge. Also, I don't see how you would be able to judge a singer's pronunciation/understand the sher/see why a team put certain moves in certain places if you don't understand Punjabi.

I agree on the hometown team getting more support regardless of any gimmick or dancing. but if a gimmick doesn't get the crowd to react, why should a team get a + for the gimmick from a judge that 'understands' what they did? If the idea is to entertain the audience and the team isn't succeeding at doing that with their gimmick, then what does it matter if you understand what's happening or not? The couple instances where I can agree with you for example is when APD/KJ hugged each other while having Yaar Anmulley in their mix and the crowd reacted! Someone who doesn't understand punjabi would have trouble understanding what's happening. But the dupatta gimmicks, the farm related gimmicks, the girl/guy interaction gimmicks, should be easily recognizable for any judge who has been around bhangra for some time.

Even after tallying of points, when deciding who had the best performance of the night: one team danced for 8 strait mins, vs a team that had a 15 second break in the middle for a gimmick. But Does a gimmick flow in the routine? or is it just added in and forced? Was it executed seamlessly? or was it sloppy? Was it in good taste? or was it just random? Did it bring momentum to the performance? or did it stop what the team had going? All of these points IMO should be assessed when judging a gimmick. I personally do not believe you have to understand punjabi to be able judge the 'performance' aspects of the gimmick.

I have been to competitions in Toronto where the crowd will literally go dead silent for any team outside of Toronto. If you are going by crowd reaction, these teams from outside of Toronto have no shot at placing even though everyone could agree they had great routines. Without a doubt crowd reaction plays a role in a judge's perception of a routine, but it should not be the thing a judge makes his/her decision off of. A judge should consider the rubric, not what the audience is making the most noise about.

The thing with the other gimmicks you listed are that I have seen teams do these things to songs that make no sense for them. That is where a punjabi speaking judge could say "wait a minute, this routine was not put together with a lot of thought" (for example a song a team used about the 1984 massacre of Sikhs). Stuff like that happens and a non Punjabi speaking judge would be oblivious to it, just as they would be oblivious to the numerous examples of awful pronunciation we have seen from singers/people doing shers.

 

[faizan]

how is pronunciation relevant to how good a team's performance is?

 

[yraparla]

I think we're overly mincing the issue here. Fluency in Punjabi is a definite benefit in a judge, but I don't think it's the most important factor and that's where this discussion is ultimately leading. Disqualifying a capable former dancer with a lot of experience and the intangibles that a judge requires (quick absorption, critical eye, etc etc) seems short sighted. I'd rather see a judge capable of critiquing the entire performance well than a judge with less of that skill but fluent in Punjabi (a judge with both is obviously the first choice). Some people might disagree and value fluency much higher, it's all relative and there's no right or wrong.

It all depends on the rubric and the type of comp and balancing the panel, rather than the judge, right?

Faizan: it only matters if the team is doing a boli/sher as part of their performance. If they want to present it, it should be judged and critiqued as hard as the dancing

 

[Saab]

To All:
We are currently looking for Bhangra judges for the Boston Bhangra Competition 2011. We have a handful of candidates already, but we're looking to add more credentialed individuals.
If you want to be a judge, please contact us @ info@bostonbhangra.com.

Several credentials that we look for:
1) Judges must be Punjabi
2) Judges must have past experience in dancing/teaching Bhangra
3) Judges must NOT be affiliated to any other Bhangra team

Sincerely,
Boston Bhangra, Inc

1) At least one judge should be punjabi, I dont know about the board. I can't understand punjabi, but I understand the relevance of gimmicks. You just have to listen to the crowd(they go wild). Gimmicks shouldn't be measured by there relevance to the lyrics, but on crowd effect. Every judge judges with that somewhat in mind(usually this goes hand-in-hand). I can see where it might be necessary song selection, but I dont see this as a competition favor live boliyan or live teams.

2)Nice. This is a huge plus. You should also consider the relevancy of when they danced(Captain of College team, 1967-1971 Polytechnical St. Marys College whatever whatever) and there views of past topics of relevance(OMG WOMEN DANCE...OMG OMG OMG) and newer topics(I saw that gimmick before. Comparing all-guy vs all girl(OMG THEY DANCE) vs coed).

3) This is slightly ridiculous. I commend you for trying, but by asking btf, your asking a group of people who have danced within the past four years or are affiliated with some team in that time span. You would have had better results on craigslist. There are VERY few people here that could fill all three, as this place not only pulls people together, but your already exposed to prior team content. Have you seen rosters these days? There are like 29 people on them from 6-7 different teams, and potentially 2-3 countries.


What I am taking from this is not that your asking BTF, but are rather telling us thats what your looking forward and are trying to get. Honestly, there might be the odd lurker here who MIGHT be able to fill your request....

On a side note, all the "Great" bhangra dancers from back in the past are usually associated with some academy, or get asked to guest teach. Established teams usually use these resources. So even if you wanted to get the dude doing 64 beats of jugni and in that grimy youtube video from '69, hes probably apart of some academy too.

Good luck.

You can't understand the relevance of a gimmick based off of crowd noise. Most hometown teams get much more support throughout an entire routine than a lesser known team from out of state/the country. If you are going solely based off of the audience's reaction, that is a terrible (and unfair) way to judge. Also, I don't see how you would be able to judge a singer's pronunciation/understand the sher/see why a team put certain moves in certain places if you don't understand Punjabi.

I agree on the hometown team getting more support regardless of any gimmick or dancing. but if a gimmick doesn't get the crowd to react, why should a team get a + for the gimmick from a judge that 'understands' what they did? If the idea is to entertain the audience and the team isn't succeeding at doing that with their gimmick, then what does it matter if you understand what's happening or not? The couple instances where I can agree with you for example is when APD/KJ hugged each other while having Yaar Anmulley in their mix and the crowd reacted! Someone who doesn't understand punjabi would have trouble understanding what's happening. But the dupatta gimmicks, the farm related gimmicks, the girl/guy interaction gimmicks, should be easily recognizable for any judge who has been around bhangra for some time.

Even after tallying of points, when deciding who had the best performance of the night: one team danced for 8 strait mins, vs a team that had a 15 second break in the middle for a gimmick. But Does a gimmick flow in the routine? or is it just added in and forced? Was it executed seamlessly? or was it sloppy? Was it in good taste? or was it just random? Did it bring momentum to the performance? or did it stop what the team had going? All of these points IMO should be assessed when judging a gimmick. I personally do not believe you have to understand punjabi to be able judge the 'performance' aspects of the gimmick.

I have been to competitions in Toronto where the crowd will literally go dead silent for any team outside of Toronto. If you are going by crowd reaction, these teams from outside of Toronto have no shot at placing even though everyone could agree they had great routines. Without a doubt crowd reaction plays a role in a judge's perception of a routine, but it should not be the thing a judge makes his/her decision off of. A judge should consider the rubric, not what the audience is making the most noise about.

The thing with the other gimmicks you listed are that I have seen teams do these things to songs that make no sense for them. That is where a punjabi speaking judge could say "wait a minute, this routine was not put together with a lot of thought" (for example a song a team used about the 1984 massacre of Sikhs). Stuff like that happens and a non Punjabi speaking judge would be oblivious to it, just as they would be oblivious to the numerous examples of awful pronunciation we have seen from singers/people doing shers.

I can understand song selection. Non-sensical language would obviously be a detriment to a routine. This can be problematic, but I think could adroitly be solved by the presence of at least SOMEONE with an understanding of punjabi, not the entire panel. If your also offended by drug or alcohol use in songs, I think some non-punjabis, just by the measure of what they have danced too, have heard enough punjabi to understand the reference and the possible gimmick attached to it.

However, I don't see too many doing what you have described. The rubric, for most competitions, do not explicitly outline gimmicks. The competition in question provides judging feedback for "creativity", but is far more likely to be explicit in crowd reaction. Honestly, while the gimmick portion is applicable under a wide spectrum and is best left to the judges, most competitions have things like powerful opening, crowd reaction, and overall performance in respect to the audience. It is not bad judging, it is the rubric itself that I am ascribing my stance too.

You are, in the way your presenting your language on the evaluation of gimmicks, saying that you could potentially see this altering or factoring heavily in the judging. From what I have seen, the teams that have consistently done well have done "dance' based gimmicks, rather than gimmicks relating to the song itself. Nachdi doing there intro to amplifier, sgpd doing the saap jumps, vcus tribute to other teams etc at Elite 8, those are all DANCING gimmicks.

Also, yeah it sucks traveling out of town to compete with local teams. A lot of time this occurs due to the financial aspect of running competitions. However, teams have won coming in from out of town. It takes more time and preparation, and a lot of understanding what the crowd would be looking forward too. Its why some teams dont apply to competitions across North America anymore. Its an inherant understanding that if there style of dancing is not compatible with what is happening at the comp, why spend the time and effort building a set that will go for naught and pay(loads of money) for it? Look at bruin. Aeg made a great, entertaining, and flowing set that won them first, and there from New York. Says a lot, considering the heavy hometown love the comp has.

Do I agree with you to an extent. Yes. Teams do make lyrical plays upon there dancing. However, they often times do not as well. Simply suggesting EVERYONE should be speaking punjabi for the sake of many of these things is not needed. I also think you get that from dancing quite often. It just brings up a problem of a very small and selective sample size that might not be relevant to the performance going on stage.

Again, nice comments though.

 

[Saab]

I think we're overly mincing the issue here. Fluency in Punjabi is a definite benefit in a judge, but I don't think it's the most important factor and that's where this discussion is ultimately leading. Disqualifying a capable former dancer with a lot of experience and the intangibles that a judge requires (quick absorption, critical eye, etc etc) seems short sighted. I'd rather see a judge capable of critiquing the entire performance well than a judge with less of that skill but fluent in Punjabi (a judge with both is obviously the first choice). Some people might disagree and value fluency much higher, it's all relative and there's no right or wrong.

It all depends on the rubric and the type of comp and balancing the panel, rather than the judge, right?

Faizan: it only matters if the team is doing a boli/sher as part of their performance. If they want to present it, it should be judged and critiqued as hard as the dancing

Judges are, IMO, are picked with the thought that they will follow the general style of the competition.

 

[HarmanSingh]

how is pronunciation relevant to how good a team's performance is?

The same way a bad mix negatively affects a performance. A singer with bad pronunciation hurts the presentation of the routine and I do not want to sit through a live intro with someone butchering the language.