AUM Festival

This year’s AUM (Auroville Underground Music) Festival, organised by Youth Center, YouthLink and Svaram on March 16 and 17, featured two days of live music and performances by artists from in and around Auroville. There were drum circles, dance performances, a fire show, a bubble show, soundscapes and more. Activities included a flute making workshop for children and an instrument circle where participants played upcycled instruments created from waste materials found around the Youth Center. Musicians who participated in the festival were encouraged to play their own original songs and to use the space as a platform to fearlessly express themselves without the external pressure of excellence.

AUM is an annual festival started in 2018 with the intention of creating a space where people would come together in music and in play to reconnect with the sounds and vibrations all around. We are often not aware how these influence us, often not aware of the sounds themselves – the fan in the office, the birds in the garden, the rumbling of motors, or perhaps even the sound of air flowing in and out of our lungs.

According to modern vibration theory, every particle in the universe is made up of vibrating strings of energy. The festival name – a phonetic play on OM – signifies the primordial sound from which the universe was created.