APASA's Got Talent 2024 🎤

by APASA Interns Ricca Yip and Dylan Chen

APASA Got Talent! A Star Studded Night of Talent, APIDA Art, and Celebration!

APASA’s 2024 Got Talent was a night to remember! A huge thanks to our Programming Director, Kendal Win, for putting together this stunning show with the help of our Executive Director Yusuf Rahman. Accompanied by our amazing guest judges, we enjoyed a night of spectacular student performances from the USC APIDA community- with an abundance of stunning song, dance, and more! Today’s blog post is being told from the perspective of emcees, Dylan and Ricca, current APASA Interns.

On this lovely night located at USC’s one and only Tommy’s Place, we were honored to host four student performances as well as our two lovely APIDA professionals, artist Srikar Nanduri and content creator Zoe Unlimited to judge the acts. Originally hailing from Raleigh, North Carolina - Srikar Nanduri has spent the last two years touring the United States off the release of an EP titled “Maggie Valley”. Srikar is the guitarist of the band Weston Estate. Formed in 2017 during a PlayStation party, the band has since signed with Arista Records, referring to themselves as “ya aunty’s favorite boy band”. The band now garners over 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify! Our second celebrity APIDA judge for the night is multi-format content creator ZoeUnlimited. After growing up in China and Canada, Zoe settled in Los Angeles where she earned her Business Economics degree at [the other school] UCLA. Now known for her pop culture commentaries on YouTube and fashion comedy videos on Instagram and TikTok, Zoe has amassed an audience of over 3 million across the three platforms while also working in finance and marketing in tech.

and Zoe Unlimited to finish our judges line up!

Throughout the night, we were joined by singer-songwriter Syante, Korean-American band BAM!, a dance performance by Penny Uampornvanich, and a song cover by Noah Le! Unfortunately due to unexpected illness, our fifth performance, Trogons A Cappella, was unable to showcase their amazing talent that night. However, it was certainly still a night to enjoy!

As one of the emcees for the night [Ricca], watching the variety of performances and attempting to peep from behind the doors backstage (and eventually giving up by fully going outside) filled me with so much joy at seeing the variety of performers and the excited faces of both our judges and audience - firstly, Syante brought to the stage her haunting voice and the beautiful strums of the guitar echoing throughout

Tommy place. Next, accompanied by loud thundering drums, strumming of guitars, Korean-American fusion band BAM! came to the stage to perform a gorgeous medley of Laufey songs as well as a makgeolli song packed with chanting and uplifting vocals (which I greatly appreciated).

As they loaded their equipment off the stage, Noah, carefully perched on his seat, guitar clutched in his hands, sang for us a jazzy tune dedicated to his girlfriend sitting in the crowd, with the smooth notes of his guitar ringing in the air.

Finally, we were joined by Penny who weaved and danced her way through the stage, mesmerizing the crowd with her emotional moves. Throughout these performances, our judges sat with big smiles and excitedness - praising each contestant for their performances whilst providing them examples with where they could grow further.

Seeing everyone's faces light up as they were entranced by our amazing performers and the crowd's cheers made Dylan and I smile from backstage as we ran up to the stage to begin the Q&A portion. Our wonderful guest judges came to the stage as we presented questions from the audience, ranging from which our guest judges answered thoughtfully and cracked jokes. Finally, our night came to a close; amid hush backstage and final decisions, the rest of our audience and judges enjoyed delicious skewers from Dollar Hits with chewy and colorful mochi donuts from Mochinut.

Kendal, Dylan and I were hunched over a sheet, showing us our winners as we sprinted up to the stage. Drum roll please….let’s announce our winners! Congratulations to Noah Le for coming in 3rd place with his heartwarming song, then Penny in 2nd place for her complex and moving dance, and of course a big congratulations to the the talented and musically varied band BAM! for winning Got Talent! Seeing our winners on the stage with flowers and loud congratulations in the air made me amazed at the incredible support that both the USC and APIDA community gave to our performers as we posed for photos.

We the emcees would like to thank everyone who auditioned, our performers, the wonderful team of Tommy’s Place who provided us with technical assistance, and of course the e-board (particularly Kendal and Yusuf) and interns in APASA! Again a very special thanks to our guest judges Srikar and Zoe for judging and insight into life as APIDA professionals in the creative field. We hope to see you again next year for another beautiful night of song and dance, as always follow @uscapasa for events, advocacy, and a fun-filled Got Talent coming to you soon.

Our Eboard + Interns with Zoe Unlimited and Srikar Nanduri

USC APASAMay 15, 2024