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Sydney Star Observer, Australia
Sept 15 2005
ACCLAIMED SINGER, MUSICIAN AND ACTIVIST DIAMANDA GALAS TACKLES
EVERYTHING FROM GENOCIDE TO TRAGIC LOVE SONGS.
Diamanda Galas is in the midst of a rant, and a range of expletives
fly as she airs her views on political correctness.
Just as the musician and activist is about to launch into a new
diatribe, she stops cold, then lets out a piercing shriek and
announces more urgently: `My espresso is burning on the stove! This
always fucking happens!'
Much clattering around in the kitchen of her New York home is down
the phone line. The espresso drama resolved, she charges back to the
phone and, without missing a beat, continues her tirade about how
furious liberals make her, describing them as `flaccid and
flatulent'.
Then the hilarity of the moment hits her, and with a shriek of
laughter she proclaims, `see, I am the consummate professional - I
can continue an interview while checking on the burning fucking
espresso on the stove.'
An interview with Diamanda Galas is unlike most chats with
soon-to-visit world music artists. There are no perfectly prepared
sound grabs about her approach to her material or what she hopes
Australian audiences will get from her show. Diamanda doesn't seem to
have time for that.
She would much rather talk about a wide range of issues, like the
gentrification of New York's artistic lower east side where she
lives, her perceived injustices of past and present Turkish
governments, her defiance in the face of threats against her, the
Bush regime and her hopes for a better future with gay and lesbian
world leaders at the fore.
It is the passionate mixture of social issues with Galas's unique
musical talent that have made her a favourite on the world's musical
festival circuit. Critical descriptions of her talents have included
such terms as `a vocal terrorist' and she has been described as
singing `like a demon going to war'.
Described as `the Queen of Scream' for her opera-trained four-octave
vocal range, hers is a voice that sears from guttural and gravelly
shrieks to searing high notes.
Born to Greek parents in San Diego, Galas, 49, is returning to
Australia for her third visit, her first since 2001.
She begins her tour at Melbourne's Arts Centre with one performance
of Defixiones: Orders from the Dead on 7 October, and one of Songs of
Exile on 10 October.
She then tours the show Guilty, Guilty, Guilty to Brisbane and
Adelaide before playing at Sydney's State Theatre on 21 October.
Defixiones: Orders from the Dead tells of the forgotten Armenian,
Assyrian and Greek genocides that occurred between 1914 and 1923. The
tale is based on witness accounts of the atrocities and told through
music, drama and narrative.
Songs of Exile is a song cycle that follows the flight of poets and
authors forced to live in exile and as outlaws. Sung in six
languages, the show features Galas's original compositions set to the
worlds of poets like Vallejo (Peru), Celan (Romania) and Michaux
(Belgium).
Guilty, Guilty, Guiltyis a program of tragic love songs and death
songs, presenting an eclectic repertoire including O. V. Wright's
Eight Men and Four Women, Edith Piaf's Heaven Have Mercy as well as
I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry by Hank Williams.
`I think of myself as a documentary performer - I am a forensic
composer,' she says.
`I discuss events as they take place, not in the parlour room of my
own life. I do masses, in which I take specific events, as Defixiones
with the genocides or as Plague Mass did with the AIDS crisis.
`In that sense, I am not being inventive as far as the material is
concerned. I am doing non-fiction, as the people who have written
masses for centuries have. They discuss the events they feel there
has not been enough response to.'
Creating her works of searing passion and political outrage does come
at a cost, as not everyone likes the comments Galas makes.
`Creating these things has always been very ugly, and the resistance
I have had to them has been ugly,' she says.
`You can't imagine the insults you get when you do this kind of work.
It scares my family because they don't know what might happen. But I
always say to them I am living in America and here I feel relatively
safe.'
That said, she is not too thrilled about living under the continuing
reign of George W. Bush as the US President. The current political
climate hardly promotes freedom of expression, but Galas says she is
not about to turn quiet.
`I might have been scared, but it has not stopped me,' she says.
`I believe, as an agnostic, that I only have one life and I want to
tell the truth while I am here. What can people do, really? They can
call me a fucking arsehole, they can call me all kinds of things, but
unless they kill me, there is not that much they can do.'
Then she thinks for a moment and adds, `except not to publish me (or
let me perform). That is the most terrifying form of censorship.'
One of her most famous works was Plague Mass, her response to the
AIDS crisis. A 1991 performance of the show in New York's Cathedral
of St John the Divine saw her smeared with blood, stripped to the
waist and strung up on a cross. Her playwright brother Phillip died
of AIDS, and Diamanda has the words `we are all HIV+' tattooed across
the knuckles of one hand.
Having survived that time, Galas has brighter hopes for the future,
with a great faith in the emergence of gay and lesbian leaders around
the world to bring together conflicted and disparate cultures into
some kind of working harmony.
`I think the people who have the greatest potential are going to be
the gay and lesbian populations,' she says.
`They are born outlaws in every culture. The people who are the
biggest outlaws, who have nothing to lose, are the ones born to lead.
They have no other choice. If they can get out of the basements the
governments have hidden them in, then they have a chance of changing
the world.'
For more information visit the Melbourne Festival website.
Sept 15 2005
ACCLAIMED SINGER, MUSICIAN AND ACTIVIST DIAMANDA GALAS TACKLES
EVERYTHING FROM GENOCIDE TO TRAGIC LOVE SONGS.
Diamanda Galas is in the midst of a rant, and a range of expletives
fly as she airs her views on political correctness.
Just as the musician and activist is about to launch into a new
diatribe, she stops cold, then lets out a piercing shriek and
announces more urgently: `My espresso is burning on the stove! This
always fucking happens!'
Much clattering around in the kitchen of her New York home is down
the phone line. The espresso drama resolved, she charges back to the
phone and, without missing a beat, continues her tirade about how
furious liberals make her, describing them as `flaccid and
flatulent'.
Then the hilarity of the moment hits her, and with a shriek of
laughter she proclaims, `see, I am the consummate professional - I
can continue an interview while checking on the burning fucking
espresso on the stove.'
An interview with Diamanda Galas is unlike most chats with
soon-to-visit world music artists. There are no perfectly prepared
sound grabs about her approach to her material or what she hopes
Australian audiences will get from her show. Diamanda doesn't seem to
have time for that.
She would much rather talk about a wide range of issues, like the
gentrification of New York's artistic lower east side where she
lives, her perceived injustices of past and present Turkish
governments, her defiance in the face of threats against her, the
Bush regime and her hopes for a better future with gay and lesbian
world leaders at the fore.
It is the passionate mixture of social issues with Galas's unique
musical talent that have made her a favourite on the world's musical
festival circuit. Critical descriptions of her talents have included
such terms as `a vocal terrorist' and she has been described as
singing `like a demon going to war'.
Described as `the Queen of Scream' for her opera-trained four-octave
vocal range, hers is a voice that sears from guttural and gravelly
shrieks to searing high notes.
Born to Greek parents in San Diego, Galas, 49, is returning to
Australia for her third visit, her first since 2001.
She begins her tour at Melbourne's Arts Centre with one performance
of Defixiones: Orders from the Dead on 7 October, and one of Songs of
Exile on 10 October.
She then tours the show Guilty, Guilty, Guilty to Brisbane and
Adelaide before playing at Sydney's State Theatre on 21 October.
Defixiones: Orders from the Dead tells of the forgotten Armenian,
Assyrian and Greek genocides that occurred between 1914 and 1923. The
tale is based on witness accounts of the atrocities and told through
music, drama and narrative.
Songs of Exile is a song cycle that follows the flight of poets and
authors forced to live in exile and as outlaws. Sung in six
languages, the show features Galas's original compositions set to the
worlds of poets like Vallejo (Peru), Celan (Romania) and Michaux
(Belgium).
Guilty, Guilty, Guiltyis a program of tragic love songs and death
songs, presenting an eclectic repertoire including O. V. Wright's
Eight Men and Four Women, Edith Piaf's Heaven Have Mercy as well as
I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry by Hank Williams.
`I think of myself as a documentary performer - I am a forensic
composer,' she says.
`I discuss events as they take place, not in the parlour room of my
own life. I do masses, in which I take specific events, as Defixiones
with the genocides or as Plague Mass did with the AIDS crisis.
`In that sense, I am not being inventive as far as the material is
concerned. I am doing non-fiction, as the people who have written
masses for centuries have. They discuss the events they feel there
has not been enough response to.'
Creating her works of searing passion and political outrage does come
at a cost, as not everyone likes the comments Galas makes.
`Creating these things has always been very ugly, and the resistance
I have had to them has been ugly,' she says.
`You can't imagine the insults you get when you do this kind of work.
It scares my family because they don't know what might happen. But I
always say to them I am living in America and here I feel relatively
safe.'
That said, she is not too thrilled about living under the continuing
reign of George W. Bush as the US President. The current political
climate hardly promotes freedom of expression, but Galas says she is
not about to turn quiet.
`I might have been scared, but it has not stopped me,' she says.
`I believe, as an agnostic, that I only have one life and I want to
tell the truth while I am here. What can people do, really? They can
call me a fucking arsehole, they can call me all kinds of things, but
unless they kill me, there is not that much they can do.'
Then she thinks for a moment and adds, `except not to publish me (or
let me perform). That is the most terrifying form of censorship.'
One of her most famous works was Plague Mass, her response to the
AIDS crisis. A 1991 performance of the show in New York's Cathedral
of St John the Divine saw her smeared with blood, stripped to the
waist and strung up on a cross. Her playwright brother Phillip died
of AIDS, and Diamanda has the words `we are all HIV+' tattooed across
the knuckles of one hand.
Having survived that time, Galas has brighter hopes for the future,
with a great faith in the emergence of gay and lesbian leaders around
the world to bring together conflicted and disparate cultures into
some kind of working harmony.
`I think the people who have the greatest potential are going to be
the gay and lesbian populations,' she says.
`They are born outlaws in every culture. The people who are the
biggest outlaws, who have nothing to lose, are the ones born to lead.
They have no other choice. If they can get out of the basements the
governments have hidden them in, then they have a chance of changing
the world.'
For more information visit the Melbourne Festival website.