Chakradar - Teental (Drut Gat) - Kala Festival 2025

For his finale Ustad Akram Khan leaves Rupak for Teental, the sixteen-beat cycle that anchors most tabla solos. The Chakradar is the showpiece of this territory: a composition played three times end to end, timed so the last stroke of its third tihai lands on the sam. Across twenty-four minutes at drut tempo he stacks one chakradar after another, while the sarangi lehra of Satwinder Pal Singh holds the cycle steady beneath the volleys.

The track runs longer than the rest of the album combined and completes the arc that began with the opening Lehra: Peshkar, Kaida and Rela in Rupak Taal, then this Teental set. It closed the second half of the Reading concert on 14 September 2025.