Singers Die Twice- A Journey to the Land of Dhrupad

Singers Die Twice: A Journey to the Land of Dhrupad tells the story of Peter Pannke's life in music, his travels from Cologne to Varanasi, from Delhi to the forests of Vrindavan, from Darbhanga back to Berlin, of how he studied in the gharana of the famous Mallik family and became Germany's best-known exponent of Indian classical music. His richly woven tale ranges from the beginnings of the gharana in the 1700s, through the last splendid days of the maharaja of Darbhanga and other proud patrons who inspired Satyajit Ray's classic Music Room (1957), to the Maha Kumbh Mela that opened the twenty-first century. We meet colourful characters whose names are still known to every devotee of dhrupad, the grand old Pandit Ram Chatur Mallik, the pious and inspiring Pandit Vidur Mallik, Pannke himself, a master of the sarangi, and the humbler film musicians and travelling players who bring music of all kinds to the fields of Bihar, across India and beyond. It is the inspiring story of a master musician in the world that he loves.

PETER PANNKE is a musician, singer, writer, radio journalist and producer. His extensive discography includes Road of the Troubadours (2003) and Morungen: Songs from a Visionary Musical (2002). He received the Rabindranath Tagore Cultural Prize from the German-Indian Society in 2009.

SAMUEL P. WILLCOCKS was 2010 winner of the German Ambassador's Award for Literary Translation (London). His translations for Seagull Books include The Abolition of Species (2013) by Dietmar Dath, Dark Company by Gert Loschütz (2013) and Rummelplatz (2016) by Werner Braunig.

**Contents and Sample Pages**