“Oslo is now my Kabul,” said Farida Ahmadi, a writer and social worker from Afghanistan, as she danced to the tunes of the opening act at the Oslo Mela, known in Norwegian as ‘Melafestivalen’.

Jailed in Pakistan and tortured in Afghanistan in the 1980s for her social activism, Ahmadi eventually settled in Norway. Since the Oslo Mela started in 2001, it has helped make Oslo home for many Southasians. Such open air melas or fairs are popular events ‘back home’, with year-long ‘haats’ or markets culminating in a winter mela. Families and friends converge here to buy or browse local produce, ride the ferris wheel, eat at stalls, play lottery or watch extreme sports.

In Oslo this year, the Norwegian Minister for Culture and Equality, Lubna Jaffery – born to Pakistani parents – inaugurated the three-day Oslo Mela August 15-17. Led by an award-winning Norwegian-Indian musician who combines raga, jazz and folk, the Harpreet Bansal Band played with violinist Sharat Chandra Srivastava to kick off the event. The Oslo City Hall Square, Rådhusplassen, became a local mela ground.

Started 24 years ago in Oslo’s ‘immigrant neighbourhood’ of Grønland, the Oslo Mela, based on the notion that arts and culture should be free for all, moved the following year, in 2002, to Rådhusplassen – the ‘drawing room of Oslo’. Each August, it brings together a city divided across class and race lines, segregated geographically along its east, west, north and south neighbourhoods.

For the Oslo Mela weekend, ethnic minorities, particularly from South Asia, take over the city center. Free attendance makes the Mela widely accessible. Foods like pani-puri, samosa, bhutta, dances like bhangra, and music like qawwali and carnatic are normalised. The front row of the main stage sees women of colour sing along with artists, even making demands for a classic or two. In contrast to Norway’s mainstream festival scene, the Oslo Mela disrupts the peripheral existence of immigrant-origin communities, building political resistance into its cultural imprint.

Set between the major landmark of the Akerhus fortress and the Akerbrygge water front, during the day, the Mela is formatted into three blocks – the main stage (Hovedscenen), the classics (MelaKlassisk) and the children’s section (MelaFantasi). At night, the MelaKlubb takes place in three night clubs and The Mela House (Melahuset).

Over the years, the Oslo Mela has featured artists ranging from legends like Pakistani vocalist Abida Parveen and Indian sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar to South African singer Miriam Makeba and French-Spanish singer and activist Manu Chao, to Norwegian band Transjoik, and Sidiki Camara, a Malian percussionist.

The Norwegian news site Dagsavisen in a recent article ranked the Oslo Mela higher than some of the country’s biggest music festivals. While the article lamented the limited media coverage the Mela receives, the festival’s attendance has shot up from the initial 6,000 to more than 60,000, according to the event founder, cultural activist Khalid Salimi.

History

Salimi, a 71-year old activist who moved from Karachi, Pakistan, to Norway in 1976, has worked with comrades like Indian-origin activist, technologist and scholar S. Ananthakrishnan to build an anti-racist movement over the late ‘70s and ‘80s in Norway. They set up an anti-racist centre, community radio, Radio Immigranten, and publications like Immigranten, now called the Samora Forum. The Oslo Mela sits in continuity with these historical strands.

“Southasian children were listening to our music behind closed doors,” Salimi told Sapan News, explaining that he found this unacceptable.

The Oslo Mela made bhangra dance and music part of Oslo’s public arena; it helped several desi artists find footing, even fame. Unlike other major festivals that have courted controversies over corporate sponsorship, the Oslo Mela has retained its cultural form emerging from progressive politics.

Like the ‘Mela tradition’ of the United Kingdom diaspora, the festival has been sustained through funding from the Norwegian Arts Council and the Oslo Municipality. This has kept the event accessible.

But this year, funding dropped from USD 1.2 million in 2024 to 1.1 million, an USD 80,000 decline putting pressure on the organizers to slice events. As the leadership of the Oslo Mela changes hands from Salimi to the India-born Ashley Shiri, 57, they continue to insist on keeping the Mela accessible to all.

Shiri moved to Norway in the late 1980s. Part of the Oslo Mela team since its inception, he walks with boots on the ground, often among young artists. For him, the concept of the Oslo Mela has developed to “represent a coming together of many peoples, from varied cultures, to celebrate their shared diversity,” as he told Sapan News.

Supporting artists to contribute to this meaningfully means ensuring visa approvals for artists, funding, club bookings and international exposure across the year.

Through public and private interventions, the Salimi-Shiri duo pushed open gates “that were closed for so long by record labels and the reviewers they sponsor,” said Norwegian music commentator Endre Dalen.

“They built bridges for us,” asserted Nasim Mashak, an Iran-origin Norwegian artist who performed as DJ Daeva as part of the MelaKlubb this year.

The Mela House includes six staff and six board members, besides three conference hosts, nearly two dozen festival staff. This time there were also 45 volunteers and several other workers who brought the show together.

Activism

Activism remains at the heart of the Oslo Mela. The Norwegian dance troupe Shakti Kreativitet included a Bollywood routine by Norwegian-Indian dancer Shilpi Bhatnagar. As she swung a keffiyeh across her shoulders, the audience cheered.

Bhatnagar, a social worker by profession, said that “those of us living in countries where freedom of speech is strong should use the privilege to raise our voices as much as possible for those who can’t.” She said this was part of her stance against the ongoing genocide and starvation of the Palestinian people.

Keffiyehs were visible across the venue, on stage and off it, made available at the venue by Palestinian stalls. The Palestinian origin rapper Mohammed Elsusi brought singers Sami and Madi from the hip-hop group DARG Team as ‘musical resistance’, keffiyehs in hand, on the main stage as well as the MelaKlubb. People in attendance walked around in the scarf and danced in it.

“Today the keffiyeh is a symbol of resistance,” said Amir Zeidan, a 20-year-old Oslo-born Palestinian who ran the Free-Gaza stall at the Oslo Mela, selling weaves and other products made by Palestinian refugee women in Egypt.

He started the enterprise two years ago when protestors began to look for Palestinian materials to display at the protest marches. “My father used to bring me to the Oslo Mela every year since I was a child, so I have a special attachment to it,” he said, explaining the meanings behind the Tatreez – Palestinian embroidery passed on through generations - on the scarves and purses.

In the next stall, 11-year-old Vaneeza Noor Vaseem sold bracelets she had made to raise money for children in Gaza. Having raised nearly USD 3,000 last year, this was her second year at the Oslo Mela. “We sent 50 percent to Gaza, and used the rest to make more bracelets,” she said.

Next door, the U.S.-based nonprofit Eyewitness Palestine, which raised awareness through the exchange of young delegates across borders, sold t-shirts, tote bags and a booklet authored by Samah Zaqout, a writer and teacher from Gaza, on ‘how we live in a genocide’.

The festival venue is also home to the Nobel Peace Centre that collaborates with the Oslo Mela to host the MelaKlassisk segment.

“Forging fraternity between peoples is a core part of our value system,” said Ingvill Bryn Rambøl, who heads the Nobel Peace Centre’s information department.

A smaller, more exclusive, audience attended free classical performances at the Mandela Hall named after the legendary South African activist. Many sets received standing ovations, including the Saiyuki Trio – guitarist Nguyên Lê, koto player Mieko Miyazaki with Prabhu Edouard on tabla – who wove jazz into their classical repertoire, and Sudeshna Bhattacharya wielded her sarod like a rockstar.

The mela ground

Most festivals in Norway charge entry fees ranging from USD 40 to 140. Overpriced food and drinks add to the business model. The Oslo Mela, on the other hand, is free. It features more than 75 artists, 10 tents and 20 trucks selling Asian and African food, children’s music and dance workshops, Bollywood and Salsa dance sessions, and awareness-raising stalls such as the MiRA Resource Centre for Black, Immigrant and Refugee Women.

People turn up in their finest.Tailors in the Oslo area are known to make more money during the Mela than religious festivals like Ramazan or Diwali.

“Women get to go out and access cultural life which hasn’t been very vibrant here,” observed writer and translator Astri Ghosh, talking with activist and politician Nita Kapoor as we sat around a lunch table.

Where else would it be possible to access international artists, irrespective of social class? This safe space is also an opportunity for young people to meet and court – and savour food alongside the Chandni Chowkesque crowds.

Pakistani-origin Fatima Zahid and her brother run the Lahori Dera at the Mela. Started by their father in 2009, today it makes nearly USD 10,000 at the Mela. Their chapli kebabs, biryani, and mango lassi sell out every day.

A couple of stalls down, the Tøyen Foreldre Gruppe (Tøyen Parent’s Group) next to a Thai food stall supports single mothers by selling samosas, Somali rice, shawarma and bhajia.

Foods often found only in designated pockets of Oslo are brought to the center of the city.

Polish artist Anna Viktor was introduced to the Gulab Jamun at the Oslo Mela, which she started attending seven years ago with her partner Jaishankar Ganapathy, a social anthropologist.

“The festival is global, diverse and inclusive. It builds an opportunity to showcase the resources that immigrant culture brings to Norwegian social life so we can break out of myopic views on immigration,” Ganapathy told Sapan News.

Such ‘myopic views’ catalysed right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik’s deadly attacks in July 2011. That year, the Oslo Mela turned into a memorial concert attended by thousands. In September, Pandit Ravi Shankar, then 91 years old, played at Oslo’s old opera house, Folketeateret, to mark the Mela’s 10th anniversary.

This year, in the early hours of 24 August hate crime claimed the life of 34-year old Ethiopian social worker Tamima Nibras Juhar. As before, there was an outpouring of support for the victim and her community.

Global and local violence remain key issues in the ongoing elections to the Norwegian parliament.

A trio of young Norwegian women, Ragnhild, Anna and Linn, waiting for ‘baked potatoes with a Pakistani twist’ told Sapan News that they have been attending the Mela together for many years now.

“The Oslo Mela stands as a symbol of resistance against the bad forces of society,” said Ragnhild.

The event has exposed them to international as well as little known local artists over the years. They find it the perfect late summer meeting place.

“It is very important for this to be free,” said Linn.

Future

Talat Bhat, a Kashmiri-origin filmmaker recently hosted a similar Mela Nordic in Sweden, on August 30.

“It is good for young people to see people like themselves on stage and all around,” said Endre Dalen, the Norwegian music commentator, noting that there are still very few venues for Asian and African music.

Platforms like the Oslo Mela enable second generation-led bands to occupy space unabashedly. One such band is 9 grader nord (9 degrees north), started by Tamil sisters whose parents are from Jaffna, Sri Lanka. They started this band merging Carnatic and folk music with feminism, contesting the diasporic rigidity that girls are brought up with.

This year, pop artists like Pakistan’s Aima Baig and Kaifi Khalil, and India’s Gulab Sidhu, presented the image of young South Asia to fans in Norway.. There was Kurdish music, Latin American folk with Afro-Caribbean tones; inter-generational pieces and alternative possibilities in the Scandinavian context.

For Khalid Salimi these are bases for taking “South-South solidarity to new heights”. As he retires from directing the Oslo Mela after a quarter century, “words don’t come easily,” he said, quoting Tracy Chapman, on his gratitude for all the support, despite challenges.

“We know our audience,” said Ashley Shiri who plans to showcase a contemporary multicultural Norway by promoting an “artistic and cultural exchange from the global north and south.”

Given this trajectory, the Oslo Mela is likely to see collaborations emerge across generations, genres and the globe over the coming years.

(The writer is a journalist and academic in Tromsø, Norway. She can be reached at moitramail@gmail.com. By special arrangement with Sapan)