By Sean Flinn | November 21, 2000
Part 1 of 2
Most articles I read on Diamanda Galas spend a good bit of time discussing the author's shock at finding how congenial Diamanda is. It's a sentiment I'm familiar with, having dealt with it myself a few years back when, as a college radio DJ, I landed a phone interview with her, and proceeded to work myself into a nervous frenzy that only increased as I researched her. She's known not to suffer fools gladly, and foolish journalists / media types with even less cheer. She's been through personal experiences that I guarantee will humble just about anyone who reads about them.
And then there's the voice. Listen to Plague Mass and The Sporting Life (her 1994 album of "homicidal love songs" with former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones) and tell me you're not the least bit intimidated. Sure, those albums gradually grow to sound thrilling and empowering, but imagine assigning yourself the duty of confronting the force behind that music. Because that's what your job is as a journalist, the same as it is every artist's job: to confront. It's what Diamanda does with every note she sings. Rule # 1 for the rock journalist, as borrowed from the legendary, pioneering rock critic Lester Bangs: never make friends with rock stars. You compromise your objectivity, end up writing a bunch of kiss-ass garbage that no one can take seriously, and you do yourself, your readers and the band exactly zero favors. So here off you go, ready to do battle with the great and powerful Diamanda, ready to have your head handed to you. You are not her match. She is a force of nature.
Except that she really is nice, more so than most articles will actually tell you, and it's not a shtick. It's generosity and compassion that motivate so much of her work, along with a heavy dose of righteous anger. That's why it's OK to like Diamanda - being nice isn't her way of suckering good press out of you. The woman doesn't lie. That's just who she is.
I already had established the fact of Ms. Galas's even temper years ago, so I was not at all nervous (excited, yes, and anxious) when I had the chance to meet her, face-to-face, in Los Angeles for a conversation in advance of her string of performances at the recently-opened Knitting Factory West coast venue. And upon running into me in the lobby of her hotel, she sprung this sneak attack (sneaky because I've yet to see it sprung on any other journalist who's written about her): she remembered me. I don't mean to sound dutifully humble here. We talked once for 20 minutes 3 or four years ago, and met face-to-face once for about 5 minutes following one of her Malediction & Prayer shows at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, Calif. And it's not like I was any great shakes back then - a fattening college kid who hosted a radio show that a handful of people ever listened to. Still, when she saw me, she basically jumped into a conversation as though only a few minutes had passed since our last chat. She recognized me on sight, was able to cite specific details about our past conversation and things she's read by me online.
So apparently, we're old friends, me and Diamanda. I've broken rule #1.
Sean Flinn: It's really great to be able to talk to you again.
Diamanda Galas: You too. You too.
It's been a few years …
Anybody's who's a friend of Schrei is a friend of mine. [Laughter.]
Actually, I wanted to start off not talking about Schrei, but rather the show that you're going to be performing at the Knitting Factory here in Los Angeles this next week, "La Serpenta Canta" [The Serpent Sings]. It sounds quite a bit like some of the other shows you've done recently, particularly "Malediction and Prayer."
It is. What it originally was going to be was a concert of my greatest hits. And it was because in Manchester, England, they have the Queer Up North Festival, and they wanted me to do a concert of my greatest hits. So I said, "OK, La Serpenta Canta" -- because "serpenta," in the Greek and pagan religions, always refers to the instrument of revenge. And a lot of these songs have to do with revenge. Even if it's in a laughing way they do. So I said, "Yeah, by the time you've been around as long as I have, you've got an animal name, so 'serpenta' is fine." I used to do "La Lobita" [The Little Wolf] when I was younger, but I said, "No, no, no. At this stage, it's 'La Serpenta.'"
And then, what ended up happening was I added some more things to the program. So it's not just the greatest hits, but it has a few pieces excerpted from "Defixiones," which is an entirely new work that I just did on Day of the Dead in Mexico City. But the new pieces are a piece by the Armenian composer Udi Hrant, which is "Hastayim Yasiyorum," [in which] he talks about missing his wife or his lover who has had to live in exile in another country. And this is really a reflection of that period of time when the Armenians and the Greeks and the Turks had to be separated -- they were separated through this Turkish "cleansing of the races" campaign. Several of them in the early 1900s. Several. And they continue. But, anyway, that's one of the pieces.
The other piece that is going to be different, that people haven't heard, is [the piece by] César Vallejo, which is "Epistle to the Transients." And this is another exiled poet, who was from Peru, which is a very difficult place to live and he was treated like garbage there. He was put in prison, he had to leave, he had to move to Pairs. The other one is by Paul Celan, and it's called, "Todesfugue" -- which means "death fugue" - and it was written after the holocaust. His parents were both exterminated in the holocaust. So those are some different pieces.
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I mean, actually, 'Downtown' can be interpreted
in many ways, and being the morbid bitch that
I am, one of the ways is, it's potentially a suicide
song. "
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Aside from that, there are some very lighthearted
pieces -- like this Esther Phillips piece, "Try Me,"
which I love - and it's Richard Morrison's fault,
entirely, because he suggested it, and he immediately
sent it over to me, that pimp. [Laughs.] And I listened
to it and just loved it, so I'll be doing it. And
as I recall, the man from the San Francisco Examiner
last year hated it so much [when she performed it
during a Halloween concert at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley,
Calif.]. He said, "I can not believe that she would
do such trivial work," and then he also me accused
"Downtown" [the pop song made famous by Petula Clark]
of being a trivial song. And I said, "Honey, you can
call me trivial, but don't call 'Donwtown trivial.'"
Because "Downtown" is, potentially, if sung properly
- which I did - it's a great song. I mean, actually,
it can be interpreted in many ways, and being the
morbid bitch that I am, one of the ways is, it's potentially
a suicide song. It's saying, "You've got to get out
of the fucking house. You're wandering inside your
own brain. You're going out of your mind. You've just
been alone too long - get outside and go see the people
in the movies," all this stuff which is probably even
more depressing but it's upbeat. The way I do it is
a little twisted, but it's my take on it. So this
guy [the aforementioned San Francisco Examiner writer]
is disappointed because I didn't do a classical program
- or whatever he was disappointed in - and he slags
off "Downtown." That's a great song!
Two things: 1) I think it's kind of significant - or maybe it's not - that [ in the song] you're heading "downtown" to do these things as opposed to uptown. You're not going to the ritzy places to get out and feel alive -
Well, maybe that's what he didn't like. [Laughs]
Well, that could be. He could be a complete snob.
He has actually written some excellent pieces before. I don't know. I think he was having a bad time of the month. I don't know. Because it didn't sound like his writing. It sounded he was disappointed that he had to be out among the human race, and critics don't like that.
So anyway, there's songs like that, and then there's the song "Losin' Him" by Little Milton, which I love, and I might have done it once in San Francisco. There's an assortment of different songs. I might do "I Put a Spell on You." I just did something in a documentary in Greece - they're doing a documentary on Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and they were friends with him, and they asked me if I would do an interview and discuss Screamin "Jay Hawkins's work. And I think they're going to put my version of "I Put a Spell on You" in his documentary. But it was such a privilege to discuss Screamin' Jay, because he was such a great, great musician, unbeknownst to so many people, and it was a real privilege. And right before he died, he was sitting in the Athens Opera House, where I'd just performed, and he said, "This is where I've always wanted to persom - a concert of arias, but no one would ever let me do it." And they were about to send him there, and he died. They think his wife killed him -my friends were very close to him. But I loved that man. He, at the age of 70 … the women were just fainting, just looking at this motherfucker in the cheapest sleazy bar. They were like, "It's a god! It's a god!"
There's been some discussion not only on your mailing
list, but you mentioned that review, where people
seem to treat some of this music as being slight,
as being not as important as some of the more classical
pieces that you've done.
Yes, there are people who would prefer - there always people who would prefer with any performer, "Would you please do more of this? Would you do more of that?" That's very natural. I think that the requests, because they're so diverse, are very, very fun for me. I mean, if they were all in the same direction, if they were all saying, "Clearly, Diamanda, your best days are past, and now you're just doing these songs by Esther Phillips," if everyone were saying that, I might say, "Well, you know, don't be so hard on Esther, but maybe you have a point." But in fact, some people are saying "Can't you do more work like Schrei? When are you doing Insecta? When are you going to do Plague Mass again? When are you going to do another song by Diana Ross?" I don't care. I'm going to do what I want to do anyway, what the fuck - you know? My feeling is, if you're really doing what you want, you're doing it all.
We're going to do Nekropolis next year, which is a mass like Plague Mass. Very theatrical. Not at the piano - maybe one number. A lot of electronics. This kind of thing. And it will be nice to be able to do it. It has previously been unaffordable because people will say, "We're not going to pay for that kind of work. We're going to pay for the piano stuff because we can afford to pay for it." But now, after the voice the voice and piano for so many years, when you build up an audience with that, you say, "Listen, motherfucker. You're not going to lose money on me, so you can do this." And it's true. But the only way to get past the whole grant thing, which I don't know anything about and have never been interested in, is to keep building an audience, so you that then can do everything you want to do. That's my approach to it, because I can't be bothered to sit down and take crystal meth and write all these goddamned grants out. [Laughs.] I did it once in my life, and I spent it [the grant money] all on drugs.
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