Melbourne International ArtsZine
The following article was borrowed from
http://www.melbournefestival.com.au/index.aspx?id=229
&ENewsID=74&ArticleID=231
A review of Defixiones by Irine Vela
Defixiones by Diamanda Galás is
dedicated to the forgotten Armenian, Assyrian and Pontian and Anatolian
Greek genocides that occurred during and after the First World War.
Defixiones refers to warnings engraved in lead which were placed on
the graves of the dead in Greece and Asia Minor which cautioned against
desecrating or moving the corpses under threat of extreme harm.
The opening piece sets out its grave premise within a sonic bed of
drones on which the wailing of a viol or lyra underscores a poem by the
Greek poet Yiannis Ritsos. “We should guard against our dead and their
power, lest by some hour our opponents disinter them and take them
away”. The sonic and vocal tapestry continues to evoke the world of
Pontus, Thrace and the Middle East. Mourning, wailing, insistent chain
like rhythms, driving piano ostinatos based on modes of the region with
Galás’s voice soaring above and within these elements, as a soprano with
a pulsating operatic vibrato, then with a lyricism that shifted in to
guttural, earthy and then distorted tones, plunging in to feral depths.
Her piano was dynamic. I wanted to hear more of it.
The text and musical choices that Galás has taken in constructing this
work acutely express the relentless suffering of those who were
slaughtered and the horror and grief of the survivors in a landscape in
which no prisoners are taken and places of worship are vandalized and
destroyed. In doing so, Defixiones points its finger at the
perpetrators of these crimes against humanity – the Ottoman Turks in
Asia Minor early last century. But it doesn’t just stop there, as Galás
also exposes the hatred that is the impetus behind the 1974 Turkish
invasion of Cyprus, the siege of Beirut in 1982 and perhaps implicitly
the present day American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The music and poetry in Greek, Assyrian (Chaldean), Armenian, Turkish,
Arabic, Spanish and English relentlessly expressed fear, terror and
grief. In a religious sense you could describe Defixiones as a dark
Mass, but really it is a funereal dirge that lasts for one and a half
hours. It is a threnody, a keening, a miroloi, in which there is no
place or time allowed by Galás for sentimentality or to hope for
redemption. Galás’s distorted delivery of the final poem by Seferis
–“they told us you’ll conquer when you submit. We submitted and found
ashes…” eschews political correctness and hope and instead strives for a
historical truth. There is no journalistic detachment here. The vision
is singular.
The set (which consisted of two giant candelabras), sound design and
lighting is restrained, simple, supportive, effective and precise.
At times I thought that the experience of the performance would have
benefited by a different venue; a massacre site, a church, or perhaps a
cemetery, engaging the audience more meaningfully and actively, by
singing with her, surrounding her, or perhaps by lighting a candle. For
a moment I imagined Defixiones in the Agia Sofia in Istanbul…
Diamanda Galás is definitely an artist worth seeing and hearing. With
great curiosity I await her next concert, Songs of Exile, and
wonder how she will interpret the eclectic mix of songs that includes
Greek folk song and Johnny Cash.
