Ustad Akram Khan (Tabla Solo) [Live from Kala Festival 2025]

Ustad Akram Khan is a seventh-generation tabla player of the Ajrada gharana, the Meerut-area school that built its name on kaidas and detailed bayan work. KalaSudha recorded this tabla solo on 14 September 2025 at The Great Hall, University of Reading, during Kala Festival 2025. Satwinder Pal Singh accompanies on sarangi, holding the lehra that marks the cycle under every composition.

The Ajrada style centres on the kaida, a compact theme expanded through variations that ask as much of the left hand as the right. Akram Khan trained under his great-grandfather Ustad Mohammad Shafi Khan and then Ustad Niazu Khan, and he keeps more than fifteen of the gharana's classic kaidas in his active repertoire. He sets most of this recital in Rupak Taal, a seven-beat cycle whose uneven divisions suit the Ajrada taste for rhythmic friction.

The five tracks follow the arc of a full solo. A short sarangi lehra opens the album and states the melodic frame. Akram Khan then opens the Peshkar at vilambit tempo, works the Kaida through madhyalaya and drut gats, and drives the Rela to the peak of the Rupak section. For the finale he moves to Teental and delivers twenty-four minutes of Chakradar compositions, each phrase circling three times before it strikes the sam.

Kala Festival tours Indian classical music across UK cities each September. The Reading evening, billed as Reading Raga Resonance, opened with a slide guitar and piano duet; Akram Khan's solo filled the second half. KalaSudha released the album on streaming platforms on 14 October 2025.