Saints and Singers: Sufi Music in the Indus Valley

Sindh--the southernmost province of Pakistan--has a distinctive character of its own, setting it apart from other areas of the Islamic world. Nowhere else has Sufism gained such a stronghold. Shrines of Sufi saints are scattered all over the country, and still countless pilgrims flock to them. The cultural landscape of Sindh, however, is reaching far beyond the borders of the present province. Having been the cradle of many civilizations, some so old that we still lack any precise knowledge about them, the valley still provides the geographical and cultural backbone to a young country which displays a spectacular mix of cultures.
The Saints and Singers of Pakistan tell the story of the travels and adventures of the human soul in a myriad different ways, so that it may not be out of place to call it Pakistan’s soul music. Whereas Qawwali, the most popular genre, made a spectacular entrance into the world music arena, most of the other manifold-and often equally interesting-expressions of Sufi music are still very little known by the western audience.

Peter Pannke, born in 1946 in Korbach/Waldeck in Germany, studied Sinology, Indology and Comparative Religions in Hamburg, Marburg, Benares and Munich. After many years of travel in the Near East, Africa, Pakistan and India, he settled in Berlin in 1990 and made a name for himself as a writer, composer, festival director and broadcaster with an output of many thousands of programmes, He is a prolific world music producer with more than 80 CDs and LPs to his credit. A profound connoisseur of oriental music, he has played an important role in the cultural dialogue between Europe and the East for more than thirty years.