Rekha Bhardwaj, Utpal Udit And Khwaab Bring Benaras’ Kachaudi Gali To Coke Studio Bharat | WATCH

Rekha Bhardwaj, Utpal Udit And Khwaab Bring Benaras’ Kachaudi Gali To Coke Studio Bharat | WATCH Published By, Last Updated: May 21, 2026, 17:48 IST Coke Studio Bharat Season 4 releases Kachaudi Gali, featuring Rekha Bhardwaj, Utpal Udit and Khwaab in a Bhojpuri folk song inspired by the First Anglo-Burmese War. Rapid Read Coke Studio Bharat Season 4’s latest release Kachaudi Gali features Rekha Bhardwaj, Utpal Udit and Khwaab, revisiting a forgotten human story from the First Anglo-Burmese War through Bhojpuri folk memory. Coke Studio Bharat has returned with the third release of Season 4, titled Kachaudi Gali. The new track travels to the lanes of Benaras and revisits a forgotten human story from the First Anglo-Burmese War, not through the battlefield, but through the eyes of a wife watching her husband being taken away by the British Army. Inspired by Bhojpuri folk memory, Kachaudi Gali turns history into an intimate lament. The song begins in Benaras’ Kachaudi Gali, where a woman sees her husband being marched away from Mirzapur and shipped to Rangoon, now Yangon in Myanmar, for a war he never chose. Through her voice, the track captures grief, rage and the devastating silence of a home emptied by imperial violence. Coke Studio Bharat Revisits A Forgotten War Story Kachaudi Gali looks at the First Anglo-Burmese War from a deeply personal perspective. Rather than focusing on armies, battles or official records, the song turns its attention to the families left behind. It reflects the pain of countless ordinary people whose losses rarely found space in history books, but remained alive in folk songs, oral traditions and local memory. Set against the cultural and emotional backdrop of Benaras, the track uses folk music to preserve a story of separation, helplessness and resistance. The woman at the centre of the song becomes a voice for many families who experienced the cost of war without ever being part of its politics. Rekha Bhardwaj, Utpal Udit And Khwaab Come Together For Kachaudi Gali The song brings together three distinct artistic voices. Rekha Bhardwaj anchors Kachaudi Gali with her deeply expressive voice, carrying both longing and defiance through the track. Her rendition gives the song its emotional centre, allowing the grief of the woman’s story to feel raw and lived-in. Utpal Udit brings a rooted folk sensibility to the production, preserving the Bhojpuri texture of the song without smoothing out its roughness. Khwaab, meanwhile, adds a quiet thread of tension, allowing the track’s sorrow to breathe without overwhelming its restraint. Together, the artists shape Kachaudi Gali as a song that feels local in its soul, but contemporary in its presentation. Coca-Cola India On Bringing Lost Stories Back Speaking about the track, Shantanu Gangane, IMX Lead, Coca-Cola India and Southwest Asia, said, “One of the most exciting things about folk music is that it carries memory in a very natural way. Bhojpuri has a rich tradition of storytelling that, over time, has slowly faded from the mainstream. With Coke Studio Bharat, the endeavour has been to bring these lost stories and cultures back into the conversation. Kachaudi Gali is a powerful example of that approach: a truly local story interpreted through the distinct voices and creative instincts of Rekha Bhardwaj, Utpal Udit, and Khwaab, in a way that feels both timeless and contemporary." Rekha Bhardwaj On The Emotional Core Of Kachaudi Gali For Rekha Bhardwaj, the song is not about war in the conventional sense, but about what war takes away from people. She said, “Kachaudi Gali sits in a very specific emotional space. It’s not about the war, it’s about what the war takes from you. We tried to hold on to that intimacy and let the emotion come through honestly. What I loved about doing this with Coke Studio Bharat was that even with the scale, the song still feels deeply personal." Utpal Udit On Preserving Bhojpuri Folk Honesty Utpal Udit shared that the challenge of the song lay in building its world through details, pauses and restraint. He said, “The interesting part was building the world of the song through sound. A lot of the production came from small details: the pauses, the restraint, the roughness in certain places. For me, it was important that the song stayed honest to Bhojpuri folk and became a way to bring back its language and culture. Coke Studio Bharat understood that instinct, and that is what made the track come together the way it did." Khwaab On Taking A Local Story To A Larger Stage Khwaab said the track allowed a forgotten local story to reach a much wider audience through Coke Studio Bharat’s platform. He said, “What Coke Studio Bharat does is take something deeply local, a lane, a dialect, a war no one talks about anymore, and give it the kind of production and platform that lets the world hear it. Kachaudi Gali taught me that the smallest details hold the most feeling, and this was the right place to bring that out." About