aSHANTI OMkar

I'm accepting radio play requests from all your talented people out there... Musicians, bands - hit me up. My show, South Side on www.desihits.com gets around 100,000 hits a month (It's not even 6 weeks old) and is the only one of it's kind - I play those from South India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Mauritius, South Africa, Europe, Canada, USA, some of the hottest South Indian Movie songs, Hot news from the South and exclusive interviews with the likes of AR Rahman and many more!

Click to go straight to my website and read articles on Music, Lifestyle, Culture, Arts, Travel, Food, Issues and much more

South Side the only Southern targeted mainstream, English language show, which is run by a top music and arts journalist and A list guests - covering music, movies, culture of Sri Lanka, Goa, Karnataka, South India, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius and those from the diaspora - I also cover countries like South Africa, Australia etc - where ever the 1/2 Billion South Indians worldwide or those who speak Tamil, Telungu, Malayalam, Kannada, Tulu, Sinhalese reside.

The show is on www.desihits.com - 10-15 million hits per month - a lot of press has covered this site. My show in itself gets 20-30,000 hits a week - it is streamed online and can be played at any time with just one click - back episodes are available too and they go under the Bollywood channel.

It is on the internet and reaches over 68 countries Desi Hits has offices in New York, California and London Desi Hits has the only Asian Apple itunes store and the show is a podcast on there too.

Tamil movies have been making waves in the recent years, where UK and European multiplexes and those in US have been showing figures and box office takings to be in Top 20, e.g. Dasavatharam - Number 12 in the UK in 2008, Pokkiri into Number 19 and Sivaji which got to Number 9 in 2007. The UK also shows Telugu movies in the cinemas and recently. Eros, one of the world's biggest distributors bought out Ayngaran, the biggest Tamil distributor and companies like Ad Labs and UTV have also been distributing Tamil films.

Many of the technical gurus in India hail from the South, e.g. AR Rahman, Ilayaraja, PC Sreeram, Ravi K Chandran, Rajeev Menon, Mani Ratnam. This show is to pay tribute to all of them and also showcase all those of the Southern heritage, those who have worked in the South and those from the North who have worked in the South - e.g. Southern director Ram Gopal Verma and my recent interviewee, Nisha Kothari - she debuted in Tamil with Madhavan in Jay Jay. Other examples of interviewees are Celina Jaitley, who made waves in the Telugu scene, Amrita Arora who is 1/2 Malayalee, Ateesh Randev from Sambar Salsa which has a Southern storyline and had worked in a Tamil movie called Nenjil jil jil when they shot it in the UK. Also, the crossover of actors/actresses from the South in the North - e.g. Padhmini, Jeya Prada, Vyjayanthimala Bali, Hema Malini, Sri Devi, Aishwarya Rai, Shilpa and Shamita Shetty, Sunil Shetty, Vidya Balan, Isha Koppikar, Deepika Padukone, Padma Lakshmi.

Please send any mp3s to:

theomkarconnection [at] gmail [dot] com