THE VILLAGE VOICE
The following article was
borrowed from
http://villagevoice.com/music/0535,beghtol,67288,22.html
For the Erased
Diamanda Galás commemorates
victims of a long-forgotten Turkish ethnic cleansing
by LD Beghtol
August 29th, 2005
Ages ago at college in her native California, singer, composer, and
cultural provocatrice Diamanda Galás abandoned the study of science
to pursue her true passion: experimental music. But biochemistry's
loss is our gain; over the last two decades, her controversial works
have earned her a place high in the avant-garde music pantheon.
Fearlessly outspoken, frighteningly knowledgeable, and dangerously
openhearted, Galás dedicates her latest work, Defixiones: Orders
From the Dead to the estimated 3 million to 4 million victims
of the Armenian, Assyrian, and Anatolian Greek "ethnic cleansing"
committed by the Ottoman Turks between 1914 and 1923.
Since 1999, Defixiones has been performed to near unanimous
acclaim at prestigious venues the world over, from London's Royal
Festival Hall to the Sydney Opera House, from the Athens National Opera
to Mexico City's Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana. Its New York
premiere (presented by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's "What
Comes After: Cities, Art + Recovery" international summit) is scheduled
for September 8 and 10 at Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts, Pace
University—appropriately enough, just across from City Hall, mere blocks
from ground zero.
The word defixiones refers to warnings engraved in lead placed onto
graves in Greece and Asia Minor, threatening desecraters with grievous
harm. Galás uses this term in a broader memorializing sense, urging us
to remember the forgotten dead, the "erased," the massacred. Her epic
performance for solo voice, piano, and electronics speaks for the
poet-author in exile—both far from home and in his homeland—as well as
for "born outlaws," as Galás calls homosexuals, echoing Genet.
Informed by excerpts from the Armenian Orthodox liturgy and the
traditional amanethes, or improvisatory lamentations sung at Greek
funerals, Galás 70-minute masterwork showcases both her astounding vocal
technique and her enormous capacity for rage, compassion, defiance, and
ferocious emotionalism. Though at times truly fearsome in its raw,
insistent pathos—familiar to those who know her crushing Plague Mass
(1990) or Schrei X (1996)—Defixiones' real power lies in
those seductively lyrical, quiet passages that occur just before Galás
wail of existential anguish erupts in reverberant majesty. Iraqi
artist-scholar Selim Abdullah notes, "The sentiment, strength . . . and
sensitivity contained in this Saturnian representation go back to the
very aspects the Greeks gave to a whole Occidental culture." Awash in
blood and tears, and haunted by images of unspeakable (and until now,
largely unspoken) butchery, Galás funeral mass is cathartic, but neither
glib nor sentimental. Any redemption is hard-won.
I spoke with Miss Galás who has lived in the East Village for the
past 10 years, on two occasions in mid August. Over multiple
cappuccinos—caffeine being her current drug of choice—she dazzled me
with her famous intelligence and often barbed wit. Onstage she's a
mythic figure come to life; in person she is perhaps even more
mesmerizing.
Few people in America, other than those of Greek, Armenian, or
Assyrian descent, seem to have heard of this horror. Why is it so
unknown? This country discusses one or two genocides and markets
them in very contrived ways. They don't write about them truthfully, the
way [author and concentration camp survivor] Primo Levi did. Think of
Spielberg and the legions of mediocrity he has propagated.
And there's the conflicting numbers, and . . . What does it
matter if it was 6 million or 2 million or 200? Genocide is genocide.
Every culture has its particular way of killing and torturing its
enemies. And the Turks are still trying to cover it up by calling it
deportation, but that's just another word for "death sentence."
You're perceived as the voice of the fallen and forgotten. Is that
something you've chosen? No—I hated being the poster girl for the
AIDS epidemic. It had to be done, but I hated it. I never meant to be
political— I'm an artist. An artist can only speak for herself. But if
you get particularly good at something it has a sort of universality,
and then it has a certain audience, and you're answerable for that. Like
Adon [Syrian-born poet Adon Ali Ahmed Said]—a great, great poet—who is
seen as the voice of a "leftist movement" of some sort, but he's only
writing about what is truth to him.
How did you come to create Defixiones? My father is an
Anatolian Greek. All my life he's talked about how the finest Greek
culture was from Anatolia—home to Assyrians, Armenians, Greeks, and
Jews, who for centuries traded languages, songs, ideas, histories—and
how many of these cultures are indistinguishable from one another. So
the notion of racial purity there is just absurd. He also told me about
the atrocities committed by the Turks against Greeks from Asia Minor.
But the direct catalyst was an interview I saw with Dr. [Jack]
Kevorkian, who said, "I'm Armenian, I know what torture is all about. I
know the difference between homicide and helping people end a life of
misery." He was so articulate, and he was discussing Greek Stoic
philosophy and the Armenians in the same breath, which I found very
unusual at the time. So in 1998 I said to myself: It's time to do this
work.
Later I read Peter Balakian's book Black Dog of Fate, which
talks about what being an Armenian in America means—it means you're
invisible. It's the same with the Greeks. Most people think of Greek
culture as a dead culture: Socrates and Aristotle and the statues . . .
And they think Assyrians are the same as Syrians.
Then, as a fellow at Princeton in 1999, I studied texts by Giorgos
Seferis and others in preparation for a performance at the Vooruit
Festival at the Castle of Ghent [in Belgium]. Defixiones was more
a song cycle then, with [the underground Greek protest music known as]
rembetika and works by Paul Celan, Henri Michaux, and César
Vallejo. I concentrated on exiled poets like the Anatolian Greek
refugees of the 1920s—my father's people. The premiere was on September
11, 1999, which marked the anniversary of the reign of terror under
Charles V, who persecuted homosexuals, women thought to be witches, and
other heretics.
Defixiones is somewhat a work in progress? Yes.
Currently I'm using texts by Giorgos Seferis, [who] is like my bible—and
Nikos Kazantzakis, who people will know from his novel The Last
Temptation of Christ. And Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose poem is
addressed to the people who survived. Everyone just hated him. And
Yannis Ritsos. And "The Dance" by Siamanto, with its description of
brides being burned alive. And the pro-genocide poem "Hate," which was
published by [the Turkish newspaper] Hürriyet and broadcast by
the BBC in 1974, right before the invasion of Cyprus—about why the Turks
should decapitate the Greeks.
September is such a politically charged month . . . Yes,
starting with the destruction of Smyrna in September 1922. And Black
September 1955, when Turkish officials waged a disinformation campaign
stating that Greeks had bombed the consulate in Thessalon resulted in
the desecration of Greek churches and the mutilation and murder of
priests and other men. And the Black September of Ariel Sharon's going
into Lebanon in '82. He was doing a real con job. And then the situation
in America in 2001 . . .
Your aggressive style and disturbing subject matter automatically
put you outside the mainstream. Yet your music has a surprisingly broad
appeal. Well, I've been creating sacred masses, which are not
exactly a popular art form in this country today. But they're meant to
be, literally, for the people. The American idea of a populist art form
is rap. Some of it is good, but most is appalling in that it promotes
stupidity and the abuse of the same groups that monotheist totalitarian
governments persecute: women, homosexuals, and anyone who doesn't speak
precisely your language.
You must get tons of hate mail. Fundamentalists of all sorts
despise me. I'm attacked by my own people too—American Greek men who are
homo- phobic and think everything I say is heresy. I got shit recently
from a Jewish promoter about doingDefixiones in Mexico. She asked
me if I really believed people would be interested. And I thought:
"Please don't insult my intelligence—or theirs. They'll understand the
concept of genocide as it has occurred and continues to occur to so many
people around the world . . . "
I want to perform Defixiones in Istanbul and Smyrna. The
psychic manifestations of violence can be just as devastating as the
physical acts—especially when people refuse to recognize them. It's
depersonalizing. I have a line in INSEKTA: "Believe me, believe
me." Not being believed can kill.
Who are your fans? People who find it necessary to think for
themselves in order to survive, because they're damned by the fact they
don't agree with the mediocrity that society shoves down their throats.
They rise above this by continuing to educate themselves. This is
especially true of homosexuals, who are born outside the law anyway.
They're still figuratively and literally buried alive by the Egyptians
and Turks. Here in New York they're visited upon by the Aesthetic
Realism Foundation and treated with electroshock. In Iran, they hang
teenage "infidels." It's unbelievable that ethnic groups still shut out
those who can be so disciplined and organized, and who can do great
things. [Gay men] either disappear completely or they address the
situation. They've had to—to save their own lives. They are great
fighters. I say these are the first soldiers you should enlist,
not the last. This is the man to whom you should say, "Will you be my
brother? Will you help me?"
Will the Turkish government ever admit these atrocities? I
think it will be forced to, through the ongoing work of their own
scholars, both old and young, and by artists and writers who want to be
part of the rest of the world, despite the horrific censorship that the
Turkish government exercises over them. My website is listed as a hate
site, which is completely ridiculous. I do not hate the Turkish scholars
who are trying to address true events in the world. There are many Turks
who want to see things change, but they're not given the opportunity to
express themselves. When they do, they get sent to prison or mental
asylums. Midnight Express is absolutely the truth.
But until the government officially apologizes, there is no reason
for it to be accepted by the European Union. You must admit what you've
done—it shows that your present actions will be mandated by the apology
for your past actions. But until this happens there can be no trust at
all.
For more information about the Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian
genocides, Black September, and Galás's work, see: www.diamandagalas.com
"Voices of Truth" series:
hellenic-genocide.com/voices-of-truth "Before the Silence" archival
news reports series, run by Sofia Kontogeorge Kostos:
www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/bts