Finally seeing Diamanda Galás perform after years of missing shows (too
expensive, not motivated enough), reading interviews,
listening to snatches of her music, I was grateful the audience was
quiet, and that she hasn't tamed her style to banter with the crowd and
break down the barrier between stage and seating.
It was a great performance, despite the staid venue and some poorly handled lighting (undergrad theater
students at the conrols apparently). The strobe effect was
blown by other lights remaining on, but Diamanda was so strong in her
presence and singing, that it really didn't matter.
Though Defixiones relates to the Turkish slaughter of the
Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians between 1914 and 1923, there was
nothing emotionally manipulative in the music—it doesn't even urge
pity for the weak and dead. She raged, her face so plastic and
mobile at times she looked like a toothless old mourner or a priestess
of some austere faith, Martha Graham singing. Watching her features
convulse as she shaped sound through her mouth and sinus was like
looking at a larynx flexing on stage. From a throaty rasp to a
soprano ululation, her voice held up across her well-known octave range. The mere admiration of her virtuoso qualities
kept my interest through the first part of the performance.
During the next part, she took her two microphones and moved
forward kneeling, radiating a presence which she pushed out into
the audience as she loomed over them, microphones like Taiko drumsticks
in either hand. From where I was sitting, she'd been no more than
a huddled form at the piano half the time time with her back to me.
Standing in her shroud, body all angles, she became an idol stepping
out of its sanctuary.
Much of this program can be heard on the first CD on the Defixiones release, however, the set has evolved. New pieces "The Graves of Our Ancestors," "Lament for Marmara," "Among
the Bones," "The Old Man," and "Mr. Stratis Thalassinos Describes a
Man" have been added, taking on a new theme with almost industrial backing
rhythms, while the second CD, Songs of Exile has been completely removed from the program.
Galás talks about her work taking on a shamanistic, superhuman
quality—this point when she moved towards the audience was the moment when it shifted from singing as other
women sing to something else entirely. When she ended it, retreating back into the stage, she
blinded the audience with light erupting behind her, a visual pain for what we'd
seen.