Is Vh1 Supersonic The Music Mecca We Were All Waiting For?

India has stepped up its game to become the hottest destination for live events featuring international superstars

- David Britto

TILL A DECADE AGO, attending a concert in India featuring your favorite inter-national musician was a distant dream. Most reigning global artists would either entirely skip the subcontinent and the ones that did come to India on a rare tour would mostly pick metros—New Delhi, Mumbai or Bengaluru—leaving fans in other cities rather downcast.

Plenty has changed in the past few years, with India stepping up its infrastructure game in the music space and making itself a destination for many a rock star or pop icon to perform at. In the last decade, the country has witnessed performances by Grammy-winning rapper Macklemore, ace record producer Eric Prydz, thrash-metal giants Metallica, rock group Guns N’ Roses as well as guitarist Slash on his solo tour, British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran and pop sensation Justin Bieber, among many others.

Tracing India’s Live Music Boom

Live music has undoubtedly emerged as one of the most engaging forms of entertainment in the country lately. The role of local music venues in propagating this culture has been immense: clubs such as Antisocial in Mumbai, The Humming Tree in Bengaluru, Summer House Café in New Delhi and High Spirits in Pune have become the epicenters of youth culture with music as their most binding adhesive.

The recent boom in India’s live music scene has been traced back to 2007 when entertainment firm Percept hosted the first-ever edition of Sunburn Festival in Goa. Featuring both global and local electronic music artists, the beachside festival became an annual stop for a new breed of party-goers that hadn’t witnessed a music gathering like this in India before.