Echoes of Kashi

Aditya Dip plays pakhawaj, the barrel drum of Dhrupad, and Echoes of Kashi is his pakhawaj solo album. It came out on 15 August 2026: three tracks, 56 minutes 44 seconds, each named after its taal, the rhythmic cycle it is played in. Indradeo Choudhary plays the lehra on harmonium, the repeating melody that marks the cycle under the drum. Kashi is the old name of Varanasi, where Aditya Dip was born in 1992. He studied with Shrikant Mishra (1952 to 2012), a Banaras pakhawaji who accompanied Zia Mohiuddin Dagar and Ramchatur Mallik.

Two of the three tracks are in Chautaal, the twelve-beat cycle of Dhrupad. It runs in six pairs of beats, with the sam on the first beat and the khali on the third and seventh. Shrikant Mishra played that cycle under Dagar and Darbhanga singers. Aditya Dip plays it here with no singer in front of him. The opening track runs 28 minutes 57 seconds. Jalad Chautaal, jalad meaning fast, runs 13 minutes 36 seconds.

The closing track is Sadra, 14 minutes 12 seconds in a ten-beat cycle. It shares its count with Jhaptaal and takes its name from the sadra, a vocal form that stands between Dhrupad and khayal. Aditya Dip works as accompanist and soloist. On stage he accompanies Ritwik Sanyal and the Gundecha Brothers, and this album records the solo side. It is a KalaSudha label release. It streams on Spotify, and KalaSudha members stream live concerts and recordings on its own platform.