The Story
OrganizerMahindra Roots was conceived by Jay Shah, Vice President of Cultural Outreach at the Mahindra Group, as a response to a specific cultural challenge: India's urban millennials and Gen Z have access to global music but increasingly limited connection to the folk, tribal and classical traditions of their own regions. The festival was designed to close that gap by presenting these traditions through innovative and contemporary staging rather than the conventional festival-of-culture format. The inaugural opening night in February 2023 featured Weaving Voices, a blend of music and storytelling directed by Roysten Abel, followed by Shabnam Virmani's Kabir-inspired performance and Abhanga Repost's reimagined Marathi abhangas. The 2024 edition continued at Bandra Fort Amphitheatre. As part of Mahindra's established cultural family -- which includes the 14-year-old Blues Festival and the Kabira Festival in Varanasi -- Mahindra Roots adds a folk and roots strand to a portfolio with established institutional credibility.
Mahindra Roots's significance lies in its corporate-funded but programmatically serious approach to folk and tribal music traditions that rarely find space in commercial festival programming. The Baul tradition of Bengal, tribal music from across India's regions, and regional folk forms that are commercially marginal but culturally vital are given production quality and urban audiences they would not otherwise access. The Mahindra Group's institutional commitment -- it runs four distinct festivals in different genres -- lends stability to a programme that might otherwise be a one-off corporate CSR event.
One of the few corporate-produced festivals in India that centres folk and roots traditions rather than international or celebrity acts, giving Mumbai audiences intimate access to Baul, Sufi, Abhanga, and other living folk forms.
