By Sean Flinn | November, 1996
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| Diamanda Galas, the first lady of scream. |
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Sean Flinn: The first questions I have here focus on the new album, Shrei X.
Diamanda Galas: That refers to the word "Shriek." It refers to a type of performance
that was done in the 1940’s in Germany and Austria. It was a performance
that was generally wordless, and it was something that they would say
came out of the nervous system. It was very…well it wasn’t as much
emotional as it was, perhaps, nervous. It was a very high strung
kind of performance. I have never studied that performance because
the documentation has been lost, but this piece uses the word "Shrei"
in homage to that theater while also being a different type of performance
itself.
You mentioned that the performance itself was not necessarily vocal ...
No, their performance was vocal, but it was very theater based. And
you know, in this piece, when I’m using the word "shrei," I redefine it
in this context to mean "an animal that is attacked repeatedly within
a confined space." So the performance is 35 minutes long, it’s performed
in darkness, and it’s performed with the darkness as a [tool for affecting]
sensory deprivation. And it’s in quadraphonic space. This
is not the performance that I’m going to be doing in Berkeley.
Yes, I know, I have some questions about that. That’s Malediction
and Prayer, correct?
Yes. But I have toured this performance through the United States last year,
not hitting Berkeley and San Francisco with it, but hopefully I will.
You mentioned the darkness functioning as a tool for sensory deprivation.
Does that function deprive not only the audience of sense but the performer
as well, to bring the performance out of you?
Yes, you’re right, because in a sense it gives me a curtain of anonymity, which
is very nice. So I don’t have to be seen during this performance,
at the same time there are no visual aides for the audience, so they can’t
refocus on something else. They have to sit there and listen. It’s
a curious expression: they have to sit there and listen to "art" rather
than looking at it, and that’s a very difficult thing, because you have
to concentrate over a period of time, over 35 minutes rather than, as
a lot of times [with visual art] getting distracted.
And essentially if something from the performance disturbs them, there’s nothing
that can distract them from it…
Precisely.
... nothing visual that they can drown their senses in.
Well, I've been thinking of Iannis Xenakis, who’s in New York this week, and I always think that the reason that his
work, or any kind of sound work – avant garde electronic work – has not
had the financial potential of "visual avant-garde work," is simply
because it’s much more difficult to process. The demands are much
more radical, and it takes time out of someone. It takes time.
You just can’t look at it and then go away and then look at it again.
You have to sit there. I had a lot of people really complaining
during Shrei, during the performance and after the performance and just
saying all sorts of things to me, you know, in whatever city I was in.
They were really annoyed. And that’s just too bad…but the piece
goes on. So that’s irrelevant to me.
You’ve mentioned before that your voice is "a weapon for your friends and a weapon
against your enemies."
Yep.
And so when people are annoyed, it’s almost like they’ve come out and identified
themselves.
Well said. You know there was one guy in Prague last year, I remember, he stood
up there and said, in his language, "Fucking bitch! Get off the stage!"
You have to expect, when you do this kind of work, that people are going
to react the way that they do. But in this particular piece there’s
no way to interrupt it to have a kind of conversation with this guy.
I have to let him do what he’s going to do and keep doing what I’m doing.
Now do you normally find that you get hecklers during a performance, or somebody
like this, who is so disturbed that they have to do that?
I’m used to that, through the years. But with the voice and piano
stuff, not really, because it’s really much more of a proscenium type
of performance. It’s much more classic in the style of performance,
but, with the other work…yeah, with Vena Cava, I had someone who ran out
into the street and hid behind a truck and people ran after him because
they didn’t know what was wrong with him. I get different reactions.
But the person who goes through a lot of this primarily is myself, because
I compose the work, and so it’s coming from asking honest questions, but
also going through those mental states myself. So if someone goes
through that, you know, it’s their privilege, but I also understand why
a person might not want to be subjected to that sort of thing. I
mean, what the hell? If somebody pays, they can do whatever they
want. They can stay, they can leave. I would prefer for them
to shut up, but it doesn’t always work out that way.
It’s kinda like "you pays your money, you takes your chance."
Right.
You talked about the performance’s effect on the audience, but what, sometimes,
is the performance’s effect on you? I imagine you have to summon
a lot of things out of yourself to be able to put these performance on.
Extreme concentration, I would say. Very, very extreme concentration.
I have to know what I’m doing. With Schrei I have notes in front
of me in terms of the text and some notes on how I’m delivering the vocal
work (although these are very sparse). But primarily I have to be
very focused on what I’m doing.
Also, I know that some of the liner notes to Shrei X mentioned that you’d been
doing a lot of research on the sound system that you used. Has that
been going on for a long time, and finally culminated with Schrei X, or
is this something that you’ve been using throughout the years in your
performances and just fine tuning it.
I think that, for years, I’ve been working with ring-modulation, changing
delay times and quadraphonic space. And I’ve worked in this way
before, on Wild Women with Steak Knives and Eyes Without Blood, but I
wasn’t using such a radical type of, for solo pieces, signal processing
as ring-modulation. I mean, we’ve done some square wave modulating
work, but we were combining ring-modulators with a lot of the work for
the piece DM42 which was giving us a lot of delay changes. That
combined with the vocal techniques that I used, which are creating a lot
of noise, gives you a sound that no longer sounds vocal. And initially
the vocal sound often does not sound vocal.
I was noticing that while I was listening to the album. At some points
your voice sort of moves beyond the realm of the vocal…that was really
neat.
Yeah, thank you, because I’ve always thought that was interesting. It
was something I heard from the first experiments with tape concrete from
Paris with Pierre Henry with Pierre Schaeffer. They were doing a
lot of spatial manipulation of the sound. Pierre Henry would just
take the sound…well, he did a record called "A Door and a Sigh." And he’d
have the closing of the door and the sigh, and that would be it.
And he would have to manipulate those two signals alone, over a period
of twenty minutes. And he made that so incredibly effective, with
the tape manipulation and with spatial manipulation. And I heard
that, and I said "you know…yeah!" I mean, he’s not using a voice,
but it’s irrelevant what material you’re using.
There’s sort of been, on that subject, an explosion in the genre of experimental
noise recently. I know that at KDVS now, we have several shows that
feature experimental noise prominently. As a result of that, have
you noticed more and more people coming to your performances recently,
or have there always been sell-out crowds? Have people become a
little more receptive to your work now?
I don’t really know, because, again, when I do something like Schrei,
it’s very demanding, and I know…well I know there’s a lot of noise work
that has kind of a rhythmic background, you know, like a lot of the rave
stuff -- a lot of the techno stuff – has become increasingly popular,
but I don’t know if something that has no rhythmic underpinning (which
makes a person feel kind of familiar, makes them feel like they can space
out to it) is really in line with what a lot of what these people are
doing. I think you’re probably right on one level, people will say
"That’s pretty radical, so let me check that out" in a way that they didn’t
before. Perhaps. But then I think they were probably tricked into going,
and then they realized, "Aw shit! This isn’t techno!"
Yeah, I’ve noticed too that some of the guys – some of the Japanese noise artists
like Merzbow, and the Gerogerigegege – a lot of the guys who get up on
stage and use metal grinders as instruments and produce zero beat per
minute type of work – this stuff is actually sort of blossoming right
now.
Oh! They’re not using a rhythmic thing?
No, they’re not.
Oh, that’s really interesting. That’s kind of refreshing for me to hear.
Yeah, it’s really interesting to see what’s happening with people’s tastes.
We’re getting a lot of phone calls on some of the experimental shows down
here.
Good!
So it seems like the avant garde has sort of filtered down a little bit to
people, sort of taking on that punk-rock aesthetic where they can do this
in their garage, and experiment with sound and just noises and not worry
about rhythm or formal song structure.
Well, it’s also certainly an electronic music aesthetic that’s gone way, way
back, and it’s gone with a lot people in the United States who nobody
knew about and didn’t really care about. So it’s going to be very
interesting for these people to re-acquaint themselves with that tradition
as well.
Yes. O.K., Malediction and Prayer: I haven’t seen any
press releases or anything on this show, I’ve just seen comments here
and there, in the San Francisco Chronicle and publications like that.
Could you maybe run through what you’re doing in this show, and maybe
describe for me the guiding theme behind the show, if there is one?
Sure.
Malediction and Prayer is a concert for voice and piano, and it deals
with a lot of songs that might be sung by a person who has spent too much
time alone in a room and is going through, because of this, a lot of different
states of remorse for things…they’re like dirges, in a sense, maybe a
kind of funereal feeling about people and things. And then some
of them are songs about people that this person might have murdered, or
wanted to murder. Or this person, when they were going through different
extreme states, maybe ended up in a mental hospital, and is talking about
that. So things like "Insane Asylum," by Willie Dixon, or "Iron
lady," which I dedicate to Aileen Wuronos, is a piece about the electric
chair. "25 Minutes to Go" is Johnny Cash…
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.
Well, that piece to me represents a lot that I think about in terms of…it’s
kind of an age paradigm in a sense, because it’s "25…24…23…"
It’s a countdown, and at the end, the person is hanging on his neck from
the noose. One of the verses is, "I asked for the Mayor, but he’s
out to lunch..17 minutes to go." And then the countdown until at
the end, you just hear him hanging from the rope. I mean, he does
it in a very jaunty way, and he’s talking about hanging and I’m talking,
certainly about the same thing, but when I’m singing about it I’m really
thinking quite a lot in terms of the AIDS parallel.
And is some of the jauntiness that you mentioned some of the typical Johnny
Cash gallows humor?
Exactly! Exactly! I have my own black gallows humor. It’s nice to hear
you say that, because sometimes people will say, "Oh man this song…these
songs are so depressing." I say, "Oh no! No! I’m taking this shit
from being depressing to another place." Because pure depression is a
place where you can’t operate. You can’t even move when you’re that
depressed. I’m taking things that people go through to another place.
So this sort of continues on…well I know that a lot of your work is about
empowerment ...
Yep.
... so that’s continuing on with the empowerment perspective.
Exactly.
I was walking around the other day and I had a revelation about your music.
I realized that, when I hear it, I don’t feel annoyed or scared.
It actually kind of pumps me up.
Oh cool. I like that.
And that seems to be the response from most of my friends who listen to you
as well.
Oh, I like that! We did a show at Carnegie Hall at Halloween.
And I did it in dedication to my best friend who just died of AIDS a few
months ago. And I put it on that day because I see that day, Halloween,
because I see it as a day that recognizes the saints. It’s the day
before All Soul’s Day, it recognizes the saints who are defined in the
American College Dictionary as "formally recognized by the Christian Church
as worthy of veneration on Earth and a place in Heaven." And I had to
change but one word in order to make sense of this, which is to say "persons
who were formerly recognized by the Christian Church as being worthy of
veneration on Earth and a place in Heaven," but who are now attacked and
stalked like witches. And that makes perfect sense.
And that corresponds to the efforts by some people who have tried to pigeonhole
you by saying that, "She just makes Satanic music." And you’ve responded
by saying, in a sense, you do make Satanic music, in that Satan is the
spiritual resource of those people who were "formerly recognized by the
Christian Church…"
Right. Exactly. It’s the same as what Baudelaire says, "O Prince of Exile."
He refers to Satan as a "Prince of Exile…who once ruled." It’s the
same thing, and so I talk a lot about this kind of inversion of power,
but I think a lot of the things I talk about can not be understood in
very traditional terms. I think that, when people think about Satanism,
they think about Anton LaVey and they think about all these things which,
for me, represent a kind of Las Vegas Satanism. It’s not really
what I’m talking about.
It’s a glitzy, fun Satanism.
Yeah. I mean, I have nothing against him. I think he’s probably
very entertaining, I don’t know his stuff, but it really isn’t what I’m
talking about.
There’s actually a band called "The Electric Hellfire Club" that operates out
of the Church of Satan, and their whole mission is to make Satanic dance
music, to show that Satanism can be fun, you know, as sort of a weekend
thing.
Well, there it is. And I think Marilyn Manson has a laugh too. He’s
supposed to be a very nice guy, and I think he kind of reminds me of Alice
Cooper actually. But that’s a different thing altogether.
I’m talking about witches. I’m talking about people who were persecuted,
I’m not talking about using symbols for something.
You mentioned Baudelaire in there, and I’ve been trying to bone up on my Baudelaire
and Antonin Artaud and Gerald de Nerval and stuff like that…Do they continue
to influence your work?
Consistently.
Are you finding that you’re uncovering new elements of their philosophy and
incorporating them into your work?
Yes. Especially from Baudelaire, because a thing about Baudelaire, for all
of his manifestos, he’s also able to back it up with profound writing.
And that’s why I constantly return to him, because he just happens to
have a gift of writing some wonderful incantational, liturgical work,
which I mean, it really lends itself to musical interpretation because
of its rhythmic elements. So I return to him a lot.And I
think, Corbiere, I’ll be doing some more things of Corbiere’s. I’ve also
discovered Henry Michaux, who I think is very interesting. He used
to write hexes, these poems that were written as hexes, and he wanted
them to operate as hexes, to either help people or to destroy them.
He was very, very serious about it, and they’re very beautiful, very interesting
poems.
Does that tie into the song "Hex" on The Sporting Life album that you did with
John Paul Jones?
Definitely. I didn’t know about Michaux then, but that was definitely a piece that
was dedicated to someone, and it worked. It took about a couple
of years, but it worked. The person was on the way out anyway, but
it was really nice ...
... to have that as sort of an extra push?
Just to feel that I had given that extra push.
Well,there you go. And speaking of the album that you did with
John Paul Jones, I haven’t had a chance to read the interview that’s on
your web page that you did with him, but I am wondering, as are a lot
of people who are interested in that album, how you guys came to work
together.
I think the interview you’re talking about is with a journalist and John
Paul, and not with the both of us, talking about how we worked together.
It was a joy. We were introduced by mutual friends. He had
seen me perform, and naturally I had heard his work with Bonham on Led
Zeppelin’s work and thought that was a killer rhythm section, I mean,
that’s it. I heard that and thought, "that’s the kind of rhythm
section I’ve been looking for," as far as the voice. But it never
occurred to me that, if we met, that he would be really interested in
touring. And then he said that he wanted to tour, as well as produce
the record, and that was just lovely, because he’s such a great musician.
I said to him "Listen, what I want to do is sing and play Hammond, you
play bass, and we use a great drummer, and I don’t want any guitars,"
and he immediately loved that. And that was it. It was a power
trio. We didn’t need any of that. We didn’t need the Barbie
Doll backup. We didn’t need all that crap. We didn’t need
all that prancing around, because we like the music.
And that’s what it’s all about in the end anyway, or what it should
be about.
Yep.
Did you find a lot of people coming to the shows who were Led Zeppelin fans
and then were like "who’s that woman?" People who then heard the performance
and walked out.
Definitely.
In Italy we did this show – it was in Rome – and half of the people were
screaming "John Paul Jones!" And then the other half were screaming, "Diamanda!"
So it was sort of a meeting of the minds ...
It was great. He had these, like heavy metal fans, and I had these
big Italian queens who were like "Diamanda Galas!" [Laughs] You
know? I loved that!
Some other questions; I had some of the other KDVS DJs and fans and such ask
me a few questions that they’ve been dying to ask you over the years of
being fans of your work. One person asked this morning, "What made
you decide on the type of music that you perform?" In other words,
you started as a classical pianist, correct?
Oh no, that erroneous. That’s where it’s wrong. If I had started
as a classical pianist I think I would have had some real difficulty making
the adjustment. I started as student of my father, and we played
all sorts of stuff together. New Orleans stuff, I played everything, Fats
Waller, I played music. I played everything. And then eventually
I started reading music, but it was not the first thing I did, I didn’t
read music at the beginning. And that’s why improvisation was a part of
my background, and I used it even when I would read music by asking my
teacher to play the piece a few times so that I didn’t read it as well.
Yeah, I think, having been in school bands and stuff, I can identify with that
exactly.
You know what I’m talking about; "Can you play that for me?"
You listen to it and memorize it and then imitate the sound on the instrument.
There it is.
I think the person asking the question too was wondering what steered you
toward working primarily with your voice (though I know that’s not your
exclusive instrument) and what steers you in the direction of your particular
performance style?
I think, about that, I don’t really have much choice. I think that’s
probably a visceral inclination. I think, again in reference to
some of that German theatrical work I was talking about earlier and in
reference to some of Artaud’s theories, that there are just people who,
for some reason or another, are pushed to do a very extreme type of work.
I think that we would not be satisfied doing anything less. It might be
a biochemical or a nervous system kind of thing, it’s hard to say.
I think my father could answer that question better than I.
That
just sparked something for me about the style of Greek singing that you’ve
been doing ...
The Mira Loia? It’s really the Greek dirge music where the women get
up and they speak to the dead. When someone has died they speak
directly to the dead, they’re not speaking through the image of Christ
and they’re not speaking with the priest (the priest speaks through the
symbol of Christ and they are threatened by the women usually because
the women are speaking to the dead). That’s seen right there as
a kind of ancient Pagan (which it is, by the priest’s standards) evil
ritual.So this type of witch-calling is as old as the hills really.
It occurs to me that perhaps it’s not so much of a performance really
... I mean it is equal parts grief and mourning and trying to find, through
the performance, some kind of power to lift one’s self out of that grief,
to have power over the depression that we talked about earlier being so
paralyzing.
Exactly. Sure, because pure depression is catatonia, And that means you don’t
move, you’re like a frozen object. And that is the most terrifying
thing. I understand that because I have had that in my family and
I have been close to it, and I did everything I could to figure out how
to never get that close to it again. That’s where I feel that I’m
lucky to be a singer, because singing is the most extroverted activity.
You extrovert the sound, because the state of really being depressed is
so introverted that you curl up and your head’s up your ass, and when
you sing you have to really make that sound go through buildings.
That’s your aim: to go as far as possible, and it takes you right out
of depression. It’s a gift in that sense.
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