Naad, a three-day annual inter-college music competition, will begin at BIT Mesra on Friday.

The event is organised every year by Dhwani, the music club of the institute, informed Prashanta Purakayastha, a member of the BIT Mesra’s news and publication society who is also associated with Naad as an organiser.

The club also organises two other annual events, Live Jams and BIT Unplugged, besides holding music workshops regularly, he said. Naad will have a flagship event and five formal events, besides two informal ones, and schoolchildren above 12 years of age would also be eligible to participate in the competitive events.

Students from St Xavier’s College, Ranchi University, Central University of Jharkhand and Delhi Public School from Ranchi, XLRI and NIT from Jamshedpur and IIT(ISM) Dhanbad and other institutions, besides the host BIT Mesra, will participate in the event.

The competitive events have catchy names. Mandra Mayhem is the battle of bands while Raageshree is for solo classical music, Alankar is for solo oriental, Euphony is for solo western, Dhun is for the instrumental section, and Maati is the folk music contest.

The two informal events are Karaoke, where participants are supposed to sing the lyrics with pre-recorded music playing in the background, and Antakshari, which needs no explanation.

“All the events will be evaluated by a panel of judges who are coming from across the country,” Purakayastha said. The judges include sitar player Harvinder Kumar Sharma, guitarist Lalit Narang and music director Arvinder Singh.

There will also be an event called Nishaad at the finale on March 15 when top two performers of all the events will take on each other and the final results will be announced after their performances, Purakayastha said. There is no entry fee. Winners will get cash awards and goodies offered by the sponsors.