Somewhere in between large-scale festivals with tons of artists and dwindling attendances and EDM festivals with big names and gigantic crowds lives the ‘boutique’ music festival; generally a bit smaller in scale, a bit more varied in their lineup and range of activities, and much more eclectic in their audience. Enter Mysa, the latest entrant in this market; the forest resort-held festival curated by Naariyal Paani and Gently Altered is an attempt to make a location and nature-centric multimedia experience work.

Music is still the main centerpiece of the event, however. Mysa boasts of a continuous 24-hour music lineup, with continuous performances from the evening of Saturday the 17th until the evening of the next day. That might sound long and drawn out to some, but 24 whole hours can really be a surreal experience, which is part of what Mysa is going for. Their whole pitch is to make you connect with yourself and nature and kind of forget about the real world for a short while. The lineup is nothing to sneer at either; it includes Matteo (the French artist famous for founding downtempo titans ‘Chinese Man’), UK artist Pinch, Mumbai singer-songwriter Donn Bhat accompanied by his band Passenger Revelator, French DJ Nina and experimental electronica act Burudu among others. It appears that the lineup Mysa has curated is trying cover as many bases as possible musically; they do not want their event to be completely pigeonholed as just another nature festival and are trying not to over-limit the type of musical tastes that are suited to such an event, which is refreshing.

More festival format-related features that Mysa are implementing to try and stand out from the herd come via the organization of the event and activities planned around the music itself. To wit: there are four stages at the festival, each named with respect to a different natural feature within the venue (a poolside stage, a cliff stage and so on). The music will be split across these four places, obviously, so it provides a good opportunity to explore a bit as you walk over to catch the next act. The resort itself is close to a couple of good historical locations (the Kuda caves and the Tala fort) so if one is interested in a bit of outside exploration, the festival offers a good opportunity to take a little bit of time to move around. Of course, stay at the resort consists of camping and cabin-ing, with a bunch of options and a dedicated campsite with the accompanying bells and whistles. There are art and wellness-related activities planned throughout the event as well, and there is an accent on local produce and sustainability. After that highly disturbing overhead photo of the utter mess caused at the Reading Festival campsite this year (look it up and cringe), it’s good that a festival, however small the scale, is aware of the footprint it can cause on the environment and plan accordingly.

Mysa is trying to take a holistic approach to a music festival, moving away from solely focusing music (though there isn’t anything lacking in that department) and instead turning a purely entertainment event into a fully curated day-long experience.
Mysa 18’ starts on the 17th of November at Tala Forest Hills, Tala.

Check out the event page here