Diamanda Galás

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Diamanda Galás, pictured in the early 2000s.
Diamanda Galás, pictured in the early 2000s.

Diamanda Galás (born August 29, 1955) is an American-born avant-garde performance artist, vocalist, keyboardist and composer.

Known for her distinctive, operatic voice, which has a three and a half octave range, Galás has been described as "capable of the most unnerving vocal terror" [1]. Galas often shrieks, howls, and seems to imitate glossolalia in her performances. Her works largely concentrate on the topics of suffering, despair, condemnation, injustice and loss of dignity. Critic Robert Conroy has said that she is 'unquestionably one of the greatest singers America has ever produced', and comparisons are frequently made between her and another soprano of Greek origin, Maria Callas.

She has worked with many avant-garde composers including, Iannis Xenakis and Vinko Globokar. She made her performance debut at the Festival d'Avignon in France as the lead in Globokar's opera, Un Jour Comme Un Autre. The work was sponsored by Amnesty International. She also contributed her voice to Francis Ford Coppola's film Dracula (1992) and appeared on the film's soundtrack.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Galás was born to Greek Orthodox parents. Raised in San Diego, California, she studied both jazz and classical music from an early age, training which reveals itself consistently throughout all her work.

Her work first garnered widespread attention with the controversial 1991 live recording of the album Plague Mass (1984 - End of the Epidemic) in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York. With it, Galás attacked the Roman Catholic Church (and society in general) for its indifference to AIDS using biblical texts. In the words of Terrorizer Magazine, "The church was made to burn with sound, not fire."[1]. Plague Mass was a live rendition of excerpts from her Masque Of The Red Death trilogy which began as a response/homage/indictment to the multitudinous effects of AIDS upon the "silent class", of which her brother, playwright Philip-Dimitri Galás, was a member. During the period of these recordings, Galás had we are all HIV+ tattooed upon her knuckles; an artistic expression of disillusionment and disgust with the ignorance and apathy surrounding the AIDS epidemic. Her brother, who died during the trilogy's final production, reportedly appreciated her efforts.


In 1994, Galás collaborated with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, a longtime admirer of the singer. The resultant record, The Sporting Life, while containing much of Galás's trademark vocal gymnastics, is probably the closest she has ever come to rock music, and is comprised of nearly all original material, something that the singer rarely does.

Galás also performs as a blues artist interpreting a wide range of songs into her unique piano and vocal styles. This aspect of her work is perhaps best represented by her 1992 album, The Singer, where she covered the likes of Willie Dixon, Roy Acuff, and Screamin' Jay Hawkins while accompanying herself on piano. For that album, she also recorded several traditional songs as well as the rarely heard Desmond Carter-penned version of Gloomy Sunday. Many of her selections both within and outside of blues repertoire have sometimes been categorized as 'homicidal love songs'. She also focuses on the death penalty. One program of songs, "Frenzy," has been dedicated to executed serial killer Aileen Wuornos, and features cover versions of Phil Ochs's "Iron Lady" and Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry".

In late 2003, Galás released the album "Defixiones: Will and Testament, Orders from the Dead," an 80-minute memorial tribute to the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian victims of the Turkish genocide. "Defixiones" refers to the warnings on Greek gravestones against removing the remains of the dead.

Galás has published one book, 1996's The Shit of God (ISBN 185242432X). It contains many of her original writings, and was published because, she says, many people cannot understand her on the records.

Her latest song cycle is an interpretation of songs by Édith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich.

As of November 2006, Galás is touring a new program of songs entitled "Guilty Guilty Guilty." It is a program of tragic and homicidal love songs and death songs, ranging from O. V. Wright’s "Eight Men and Four Women" to Timi Yuro’s "Time"; from Johnny Cash’s Long Black Veil to Édith Piaf’s "Heaven Have Mercy". The concert will also include "O Death" by Ralph Stanley. Diamanda may also include original songs for this concert that are currently in rehearsal, including "Tony" from thet 1994 album The Sporting Life.

[edit] Critical response

Susan McClary (1991) writes that Galás, "heralds a new moment in the history of musical representation," after describing her thus: "Galás emerged within the post-modern performance art scene in the seventies... protesting... the treatment of victims of the Greek junta, attitudes towards victims of AIDS... Her pieces are constructed from the ululation of traditional Mediterranean keening...whispers, shrieks, and moans."

[edit] Discography

  • Litanies of Satan (1982) - notable for "Wild Women with Steak-Knives (The Homicidal Love Song for Solo Scream)"
  • Diamanda Galas (1984) - AKA Panoptikon
  • The Divine Punishment (1986)
  • Saint of the Pit (1986)
  • You Must Be Certain of the Devil (1988)
  • Masque of the Red Death Trilogy (Saint of the Pit & The Divine Punishment/You Must Be Certain of the Devil) (1989)
  • Plague Mass (1984 End of the Epidemic) (1991) (live)
  • The Singer (1992)
  • Vena Cava (1993)
  • The Sporting Life (1994), with John Paul Jones
  • Schrei X (1996) (live)
  • Malediction & Prayer (1998) (live)
  • La serpenta canta (2003) (Live collection of her favourite blues songs and one of her own (Baby's Insane))
  • Defixiones, Will and Testament (2003)
  • Guilty Guilty Guilty To be released in 2007 on Mute
  • You're my thrill To be released in 2007 on Mute

[edit] Source

  • McClary, Susan (1991). Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, p.110-11. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0816618984.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Interview with Diamanda Galas. Terrorizer Magazine. Archived from the original on 2005-02-05. Retrieved on August 12, 2006.

[edit] External links

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