defixiones reviews

One of the aims of the recently re-opened CCA in Glasgow is to bring challenging and contemporary new work to the arts centre. Greek American singer Diamanda Galas fits those criteria as snugly and as sharply as a nail hammered into flesh. Variously named "the Bride of Satan", "the Diva of Disease" and a "vocal terrorist", she is unlikely to be appearing in a production of Don Giovanni anywhere near you soon.

According to Galas, the common and often the first reaction to her work is "What the hell are you doing that kind of work for? We don't understand it. Why can't you do something more simple?"

Strung-out somewhere in the No Man's Land between opera and the avant garde, fortysomething Galas has the kind of wild and weird credentials most rock 'n' roll stars can't begin to imagine without quaking in their Gap leather trousers.

Galas lets rip with beauts like: "The Taliban thought they could teach the world that the United States was corrupt by bombing us. Like we didn't know that we were corrupt. Besides, Timothy McVeigh tried to teach us that lesson. If you're going to be bombed, I'd much rather be bombed by a homeboy."

An early adulthood spent working the streets and shooting up dope is not the normal entry qualification for people who go on to sing in the Athens Opera House but for Galas it was just the first chapter in a career that has seen her arrested at St Patrick's Cathedral in New York, photographed on a burning cross by Annie Leibovitz and denounced as blasphemous by the Italian government. Eat your heart out, Mr Marilyn Manson.

Not that it's all shock headlines around Galas' neck of the woods. She speaks five languages and has sung in 10. As well as her personal taste in chemicals which has led to her testing positive for Hepatitis C, she also has multiple degrees in biochemistry from the University of California. She is intimidatingly clever and scarily outspoken.

On the line from New York though, she sounds nothing like one might imagine from her more extreme performances and quotes. Instead, she laughs raucously, calls me 'honey' and confesses that "some of these interviews can be difficult. A journalist comes on the line and their opening gambit is, 'So Ms Galas, what do you think of the United States today?'"

In place of the severe intellectual I had expected, Galas peppers scabrous views on Hollywood starlets with a stream of obscenities that would have a Russian sailor gasping in admiration.

Galas began to make a name for herself with her Plague Mass triptych in the mid-Eighties. A series of compositions examining people's response to disease, it was dedicated to her brother after he died of AIDS in 1986. Galas has the words "we are HIV+" tattooed on her knuckles. In 1990 she performed her Mass at the Cathedral St John The Divine in New York stripped to the waist and covered in blood. Bodily dysfunction have always played a significant role in Galas's work, usually as a symbol of mental and moral decay. On a personal level, she uses her own medical condition as a litmus test for the human condition.

"I don't really mind having hepatitis," she says. "It was one of the things that I got from shooting dope years ago. It's not anyone's fault. It's not my fault because I had a blast and I would do it today if I could. I'm willing to pay the price but I also found it very interesting because I'm trying to live with it. I look at it as a situation to be dealt with. If you look at any kind of paradigm and examine it closely then you should be prompted to see how you can make the most of it and meet the situation with dignity and humour."

Galas is not one to let perceived injustices lie dormant and Defixiones and Will and Testament, the two pieces she is to perform in Glasgow, are masses in honour of the Armenian, Assyrian, and Hellenic genocides of 1914-1923. The concerts include music set to the texts of Syrian/Lebanese poet Adonis and Armenian poet Siamanto. Defixiones apparently refers to the warnings which were carved in to the graves of the dead in Greece. Anyone desecrating the graves was under the curse of a gruesome end. Performed for a large part in the pitch black, it's likely to be an unsettling experience for all concerned.

Given this deep level of interest in death, you could be forgiven for thinking that Galas would get on well with Eyore. Contrary to the last, she insists the opposite is true. "I have to be an optimist. An optimist is somebody who is aware that they should be on guard and not believe everything that they hear but an optimist is someone who absolutely refuses not to stand up and not to keep living because life is so beautiful."

Diamanda Galas plays the CCA, Glasgow, tomorrow and Wednesday

Jonathan Trew

Sunday, 11 November 2001

Scotland on Sunday