The eight edition of South Side Story celebrates southern Indian culture in Delhi

Rahul Dixit | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement Delhi has always been a city of arrivals. People come here from across the country, bringing with them their languages, food, music, memories and ways of making a home. Walk through the city long enough and its cultural map begins to look like a wonderful potluck with Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayali, Marathi and more, all finding ways to coexist, overlap and occasionally end up on the same plate. ‘It is this spirit of cultural cross-pollination that Red FM’s South Side Story has tapped into for the past seven years. What began as a music festival celebrating South Indian artistes has steadily grown into a broader cultural gathering, bringing the food, literature, cinema, dance and traditions of the South to audiences in the North. Now in its eighth edition, the festival returns to Delhi on August 29 and 30, with an eclectic line-up that moves from Thaikkudam Bridge and Karthik to dancer Shobana, Raghu Dixit, Avial, Baby Jean and Aksomaniac. “We realised that it can’t just be a music festival. It needs to be an experiential festival where people come and experience the culture, food, art, literature and cinema. That’s why we have brought in kalaripayattu, chendamelam, the Onam sadya, literary conversations, cinema, art and craft. We want people to come and spend the entire day here, and not just come for a particular artiste or a particular performance,” says Nisha Narayanan, director and COO, Red FM. After spending most of its seven-year run in Delhi and Mumbai, South Side Story is now looking beyond its original geography. This year, the festival travels to Pune for the first time, with a one-day edition on August 22, and to Bengaluru on November 28, alongside its two-day Delhi edition. The desire for variety extends to the way the music itself is programmed. Rather than splitting the festival across multiple stages by genre, South Side Story brings artistes from disparate musical worlds together on one stage — from folk and experimental music to pop, rap and classical forms. There is also Spotlight, an initiative that gives emerging talent a chance to perform after being shortlisted by the South Side Story jury. “We invite artists who may not have had the opportunity to perform on a platform of this scale. It is important for us to not only bring established artists to the stage, but also to create a space for newer voices and give audiences a chance to discover them,” says Nisha. And perhaps that is why the festival’s audience extends beyond the South Indian community. According to Nisha, around 30-35% of its Delhi audience comprises of people from the North who come to experience the music, food and culture of the South. In a city where almost everyone has arrived from somewhere else, perhaps the appeal is less about discovering an unfamiliar culture and more about recognising how easily one culture can make room for another. South Side Story will be hosted at KD Jadhav Indoor Stadium on August 29 and 30. For tickets log on to southsidestory.in Published - September 01, 2026 11:24 am IST