Diamanda Galás
Galás has been described as "capable of the most
unnerving vocal terror". Her works largely concentrate on the topics of
AIDS, mental illness, despair, injustice, condemnation, and loss of dignity.
She has worked with many avant-garde composers, including Iannis Xenakis, Vinko
Globokar and John Zorn, and also collaborated with jazz musician Bobby
Bradford, and John Paul Jones, former bassist of Led Zeppelin.
Background and education
Galás was born and raised in San Diego, CA to Greek Orthodox parents. She studied a wide range of musical forms, and played gigs in San Diego with her father, also a musician, performing Greek and Arabic music.
Early career
After moving to Europe, Galas made her solo performance debut at the Festival d'Avignon, in France, in 1979, performing the lead in the opera Un Jour comme un autre, by composer Vinko Globokar, based upon Amnesty International's documentation of the arrest and torture of a Turkish woman for alleged treason. Her first album was The Litanies of Satan, released in 1982. Her second album, Diamanda Galas, was released in 1984.
Her work first garnered widespread attention with The
Masque of the Red Death, an operatic trilogy which includes The Divine
Punishment, Saint of the Pit and You Must Be Certain of the Devil. In it, she
details the suffering of people with AIDS. Shortly after the recording of the
trilogy's first volume began, her brother, playwright Philip-Dimitri Galás,
became sick with the disease, which goaded Galás to redouble her efforts.
Philip-Dimitri Galás died in 1986, just before the completion of the
trilogy.
Career
Diamanda Galás at the QE Hall in London
Galás began writing and performing on the subject of
AIDS in 1984, while living in San Francisco. In 1988 she joined ACT UP, the
AIDS activist group.
On December 10, 1989, Galás was arrested inside Saint
Patrick's Cathedral, as part of ACT UP's Stop the Church demonstration, while
protesting John Cardinal O'Connor's opposition both to AIDS education, and to
the distribution of condoms in public schools. She was one of 53 people
arrested inside the cathedral.
Galás appears on the 1989 studio album Moss Side Story
by former Magazine and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds instrumentalist Barry
Adamson. Moss Side Story is a "soundtrack for a non-existent film
noir".
In 1990 Galás performed at the Cathedral of Saint John
the Divine in New York, the recording of which was released in 1991 as Plague
Mass, in which she criticized the Roman Catholic Church for its indifference to
AIDS.
Galás also sings in a blues style, interpreting a wide
range of blues songs with her unique piano and vocal styles. This aspect of her
work is perhaps best represented by her 1992 album, The Singer, on which she
covered Willie Dixon, Roy Acuff, and Screamin' Jay Hawkins, as well as
"Gloomy Sunday", a song written by Hungarian pianist and composer
Rezső Seress in 1933 and translated into English by Desmond Carter.
In 1993 Galás released Judgement Day, a video of her
performances, and Vena Cava, a live album, recorded at The Kitchen in 1992.
In 1994 Galás collaborated with Led Zeppelin bassist
John Paul Jones, a longtime admirer of the singer. The resulting record, The
Sporting Life, was released the same year. She was also featured on the
soundtrack for Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers.
In 1995 Galás contributed her voice to the eponymous
album of British synth-pop duo, Erasure, at the invitation of the lead singer,
Andy Bell
Galás has published one book, The Shit of God, in
1996. It contains many of her original writings. Also in 1996, she released
Schrei X, a live recording.
In 1997, Galás contributed vocals to the album Closed
on Account of Rabies, a tribute to Edgar Allan Poe which also included Iggy
Pop, Debbie Harry and Marianne Faithfull, lending their voices to the tales of
the legendary author. Galás' reading of "The Black Cat" was the
longest recording on the compilation.
In 1998 Galás released Malediction and Prayer, which
was recorded live in 1996 and 1997.
In August 2004 Galás released the album Defixiones,
Will and Testament: Orders from the Dead, an 80-minute memorial to the
Armenian, Greek, Assyrian and Hellenic victims of the Turkish genocide.
Defixiones refers to the warnings on Greek gravestones against removing the
remains of the dead. In December 2004 Galás released, La Serpenta Canta a live
album including material recorded between May 1999 & November 2002.
In 2005, Galás was awarded Italy's prestigious
Demetrio Stratos International Career Award.
In 2008, Galás released her seventh live album, Guilty
Guilty Guilty.
Galás' vocals from her song "Orders from the
Dead" were used on the album Aealo by Greek black metal band Rotting
Christ, released in February 2010.
In 2011, she collaborated with Soviet dissident artist
Vladislav Shabalin for "Aquarium", a sound installation inspired by
the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The event took place at
Leonhardskirche in Basel (Switzerland) from June 12 to 19.[8]
In 2013, Galás and Vladislav Shabalin had the sound
installation "Aquarium" May 9 to 12 in the church of San Francesco in
Udine (Italy), at the festival "Vicino/Lontano".
Galás is currently working on remastering her albums
for release later 2016.
Film work
Galás has often worked in the film industry. She was the voice of the dead in The Serpent and the Rainbow. A cover of the Schwartz-Dietz song "Dancing in the Dark" appears in Clive Barker's film Lord of Illusions during the closing credits. "Le Treizième Revient" and "Exeloume" appear on the soundtrack to Derek Jarman's The Last of England. She contributed vocals to Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film Dracula as a group of female vampires, and vocal improvisation to Hideo Nakata's 2005 film The Ring Two. Excerpts from Galás' "I Put a Spell on You", "Vena Cava", "The Lord is My Shepherd", and "Judgement Day" can be heard in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers.
In 2011, she premiered the film Schrei 27, made in
collaboration with Italian filmmaker Davide Pepe. Based on Galás' 1994 radio
piece, Schrei X, a co-commission of New American Radio and the Walker Art
Center, the film is described as an "unrelenting" portrait of a body
suffering torture in a medical facility.
Most recently she contributed vocal work and
composition to James Wan's 2013 horror film The Conjuring, and "Free Among
the Dead", from Galás' The Divine Punishment was featured in Zoe
Mavroudi's 2013 documentary about the criminalization of AIDS, Ruins: Chronicle
of an HIV Witch-Hunt.
Influences
Galás has cited multiple artists as influences on her music, including Maria Callas, Annette Peacock, Patty Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Johnny Cash. She is also influenced greatly by Greek and Middle Eastern styles of singing, as well as blues music.
Discography
Studio albums
1979 – If Looks Could Kill (w/Jim French and Henry Kaiser)
1982 – The Litanies of Satan
1984 – Diamanda Galas
1986 – The Divine Punishment
1986 – Saint of the Pit
1988 – You Must Be Certain of the Devil
1992 – The Singer
1994 – The Sporting Life (w/John Paul Jones)
Compilation albums
1989 – Masque of the Red Death
Live performance albums
1991 – Plague Mass
1993 – Vena Cava
1996 – Schrei x
1998 – Malediction and Prayer
2003 – La serpenta canta
2003 – Defixiones: Will and Testament
2008 – Guilty Guilty Guilty
Long-form videos
1986 – The Litanies of Satan (VHS)
1993 – Judgement Day (VHS)
Promotional videos
1988 – Double-Barrel Prayer[14]
1994 – Do You Take This Man?[15]
Books
1996 – The Shit of God
