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April 2022 Newsletter
Ramadan Mubarak!!!
Annual Leadership
Summit 2022

Splendor of the East
The CAPA board and Splendor of the East Planning Committee are thrilled to begin planning our SOE for 2022. The theme this year is Metamorphosis and hopes to represent the changes we have all gone through as we navigated the past two years. This year, the show is going to look and feel a little different – we will be back on stage in person after 2 long years and our performance will be an outdoor event held in the late summer! What better way to break into our 3rd decade of the SOE than to bring about some fresh and exciting changes!
 
One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is how much we value and appreciate all of YOUR talent! To make the 2022 SOE the best ever, we’re reaching out to ask you all to start preparing your groups of dancers, musicians, singers and artists to participate in the show this summer! Guidelines for individuals acts, plus the show’s theme, will be coming very shortly, but please join the CAPA board in creating excitement for our event and get those creative juices flowing!
 
We are now accepting applications for cultural performances that tie to the show’s theme. Performance criteria are as follows:
  • Solo and group acts will be accepted
  • All final performances must be between 3-5 minutes total
  • Music, instruments, dance, martial arts, fashion shows, storytelling are all great examples of different types of acts – get creative!
  • All performances must represent an aspect of the Asian/Pacific Islander diaspora
  • All performances must tie to the theme of Metamorphosis (change, renewal, growth, etc.)

Initial applications should be a video submission of the choreographer detailing the act and how it will relate to this year’s theme, as well as a sample of the type of performance (sample of a dance, instrumental or vocal song, etc.). Please also specify the number of participants in your act and which culture you are representing.

All video audition entries should be submitted to CAPA Cultural Committee Chair Suman Desaraju by May 10th 2022 at suman@capa-mi.org

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the SOE Cultural Director, Suman Desaraju, at (908) 510-2231 or suman@capa-mi.org
International Women's Day
On Sunday March 20, 2022, CAPA hosted an International Women’s Day event in collaboration with the Asian Indian Women’s Association (AIWA) to raise awareness and have an in-depth discussion on Breaking The Bias, which is the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day.
 
The program featured Grace Lee, CEO and President of Ashford Connex, LLC, Ellie Mosko, Principal Attorney, Mosko Law PC, Dr. Su McKeithen-Polish, Bilingual Education/Title III Consultant, Macomb Intermediate School District and our keynote speaker - Representative Padma Kuppa – who shared her thoughts and experiences on this very important topic.
 
Close to a 100 people signed up for the event and everyone who attended left knowing more about this topic and were energized about some steps that they could take to break the bias for themselves and help others step out of judgment into curiosity.
 
Thank you for being an active member of our community – we look forward to bringing you many more events like these that enlighten us and educate us!
 
Warm Regards,
 
Pina Vyas
President
Council of Asian Pacific Americans
The Decolonization Of Anshi
By Anshi Pacha, CAPA Youth Chair

In my desire to address the great issues that impact Asian-American teens, I’ve spent all
of my past articles addressing singularly the issues. This has led to a string of really depressing articles that definitely need to be talked about but could be found in every major news outlet. The worries of Asian teens are absolutely sometimes centered around the fact that the world sees us as less than others due to our race, but mainly they’re just about school, friends, and how our hair looks. So I’ve decided that if I want to depress myself in the name of doing something fun, I can just spend another two hours scrolling through people on TikTok posting their stats and the colleges they didn’t get into.

Therefore, instead of talking about the string of recent hate crimes, I’m going to point you toward NextShark’s Instagram for that and tell you about my playlists. I’m going to start this with a few facts about myself.'

Fact 1: I listen to a lot of music. Like a lot a lot. Like Spotify told me I listened to over 130k minutes of music last year a lot.

Fact 2: My taste in music is not so much a taste in music so much as it is anything that’s good and is neither country nor top 40.

Fact 3: I refused to listen to Hindi music until a year ago.

I put a lot of effort into my Spotify playlists. They’re expertly curated masterpieces, that contain music ranging from pre- Jesus Is King Kanye to the gothic folk band The Amazing Devil, in which the songs are centered around a common theme or general vibe. I do not simply put songs into my playlists with all the grace of a person selecting the best grapes at Meijers, I choose them like a sommelier at a wine tasting, choosing the best ones to take home.

But in all of my pretentious browsing of tracks, up until I got dragged into helping my friend Adi move his guitar setup, I refused to even go near Hindi music. Then Adi did the best thing anyone could do for my identity as an Indian woman: he played Girls Like To Swing. As the first strains of revamped retro pop filtered through his speakers, a grand realization dawned upon me. It turned out that Hindi music wasn’t inherently bad, it was just the adults’ taste in it that was.

This tiny thing was huge for me, I had been at a place in my life where I was fully
suppressing my identity as an Indian. I had been secretly harboring the view that being Indian was something negative, something that wasn’t fun, or cool, or anything other than mildly burdensome upon my future when I wasn’t dressed up for Diwali or Eid. Those four minutes and three seconds opened up my mind to what being Indian could be. Hindi music wasn’t all old people from the ‘60s playing the sitar. It was also people like Divine spitting bars that couldn’t rival Kendrick, because nothing can, but got as close as physically possible. It was dreamy indie ballads like Duur, up-beat pop songs like Ilahi, and fun piano riffs like Naina Da Kya Kasoor.

So if this negative perception that I had of Hindi music wasn’t true, then did that mean that everything else I thought was bad about my culture wasn’t either? I’ve spent the past 10 months since my mind was opened to these possibilities ruminating on this. The answer that took me so long to arrive at is simple. Of course not, gajar ka halwa is still terrible, nothing will ever make it good, but most other things are.
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