My Life Is a Song

DescriptionGaddar, poet, singer, revolutionary, is among the most well-known of thecreative minds associated with people’s resistance movements in India. BornGummadi Vittal Rao in 1947, in Tupran village of Medak district in what isnow Telangana, Gaddar became an activist in his youth after dropping out ofengineering college due to poverty. With a gift for singing and song-writing,he travelled the road—for some time underground—reaching lakhs of peoplewith his music, and became the cultural face of ‘rebellion’, the literal meaningof his nom de guerre.Of the thousands of songs Gaddar performed, only a few were ever recordedin print. My Life Is a Song brings together, for the first time in Englishtranslation, twenty-three representative songs, selected by his friend andfellow traveller, Vasanth Kannabiran. Translated from the original Teluguwith an eye to Gaddar’s unique style and delivery, this selection takes theextraordinary ‘anthems’ of one of India’s greatest singer-poets—and a livinglegend of revolutionary thought—to a wider audience.