[ d i a m a n d a | g a l a s ]

The dead can crawl out of their graves and the dead can dance, but the dead can't sing. They need someone living to raise their tormented voices out of the grave, and into the lap of God. And the someone they have elected is the mesmerising Diamanda Galas.

The first time you hear Galas sing, you think of Yma Sumac, the Latin-American singer, so startling is her primordial, four-octave vocal range. She is a sorceress whose unearthly guttural wail evokes pictures of volcanoes erupting somewhere in the world, the howl of the banshee in the desert, damnation's minions coming to get you. With her mane of black hair, black leathers and cadaverous looks, she represents an unstoppable force of nature.

'My voice was given to me as an instrument of inspiration for my friends, and a tool of torture and destruction to my enemies. An instrument of truth,' she says true to style.

Born in San Diego to Greek Orthodox parents, Galas is one of those strong-willed, aggressive and determined women Mediterranean cultures tend to spit up at regular intervals. She has the shrewd, realistic and tough attitude of someone who was raised on the streets and witnessed the harsh realities of life early on. Like the gift of her voice, her intelligence is innate and her defiance of social and political injustices reflexive.

Although her parents encouraged her gift for the piano, they were not forthcoming with praise for her singing. But that didn't stop Galas from studying a wide range of musical forms, opera included, as well as performance art at the University of California. Life experience, which would later inform her work, came in the form of life on the streets of Oakland. She hung out with drag queens (she was known as Miss Zina). Galas also kept company with thieves and took every drug under the sun. Fortunately for the world, she realised she was a better

musician than she was a criminal. 'I don't see one as being better than the other,' she explains. 'I think I've found a successful interface between the two ... '

Her identification with social outcasts and misfits was nurtured when she and her brother, the poet and playwright, Philip Dimitri Galas, steeped themselves in the philosophies of Baudelaire, Artaud, Nietzsche, Poe, among others. 'All my work is central to the image of a person being crucified or burned at the stake. When people go into a church,' she adds, 'they see the nice cross ... and say that Jesus Christ was a good man, but I approach it from the position that Jesus was an outlaw.' Like the iconoclastic writers who informed her, she stands outside the social norm, accusing, challenging and exposing the seething underbelly 'civilised society' would much rather forget was there. She asserts that her music must combine aesthetics with every-day political relevance.

She made her first live appearance in 1979, in France, and made her breakthrough in Paris, and various European festivals, with her solo works, "Wild Women with Steak Knives" and "Songs

from the Blood of those Murdered". The latter is an astounding malediction directed against the junta that ruled Greece between the years 1969 and 1974, and is dedicated to the rebels who died protecting free speech and democracy. It was with this piece that Galas first developed her unique style of the Greek mountain song, echoing the centuries-old, haunting dirges sung by Greek women over their dead men.

True to the liturgical quality of her work, for her first record, "The Litanies of Satan", she incorporated passages from Baudelaire and "The Bible". But it was two years later, in 1984, when she released "Masque of the Red Death", the first of her Plague Mass albums, that the world had the doors to their sensorium thrown wide open and people began to pay attention in earnest. With this album, and against the advice of colleagues and fellow artists, Galas raised a harrowing jeremiad against the hypocrisy, misinformation and suffering surrounding AIDS. 'In the face of that level of resistance to my intuition, that attempt to sabotage my vision, I've had to say, "The Mike Tyson of the voice does

not waste time talking about bullshit,"' she says of her defiant decision to speak out for the dying.

Her gamble paid off, and she was quickly signed up by Mute records, for whom she wrote "The Divine Punishment". She is quick to point out that this album is not about AIDS but about 'a basic dilemma -- the feeling of powerlessness, the concept of quarantine and scapegoating ... ' It was at this time that her beloved brother, a homosexual, developed full-blown AIDS and died. Drawing inspiration from pain, she responded by writing, "Saint of the Pit", which was followed by the final part of the Plague Mass trilogy, "You Must Be Certain of the Devil".

Diamanda Galas' highly charged, abrasive, evocative performances on the Plague Mass albums is a strong antidote to the schmaltzy, mawkish crap often spoken about AIDS by celebrities desperate to join the cause of the moment.

To her belongs perhaps the only truly artistic voice that transcends a contemporary medical

dilemma to join the universal ranks of human suffering and redemption, equal to plague responses from Leviticus, Swift and Defoe. In true pop culture form, she combines extraordinary vocal ability with a genuine flair for flamboyant theatrical appearances. Images from her concerts often show her crucified, half naked and covered in blood. Paradoxically, her presence evokes the taint of medieval cathedrals, martyrs and dominatrixes. Flames lick the stage as she rasps and hisses like something out of "Carrie" or a Mario Bava zombie film.

But call Diamanda Galas a Goth and more than likely she'll spit on you before cursing your lineage. She says that if Gothic means Edgar Allen Poe, or nineteen-century symbolism, then that's fine. But she bristles at being compared to 'a bunch of bored kids dressed in black worshipping death. I'm not interested,' she says.

My initial identification with Galas rests on the fact that we both share a Greek-Turkish lineage.

She reminds me of the strong-willed, brassy women who brought me up, and ruled the roost on the rocky island where I was born. A strong feature of these archaic Mediterranean cultures is the notion of vendetta -- where an insult against the family name gets you 'a knife right up the fucking ass,' as Galas colourfully puts it. Crimes such as the rape of a woman, for example, are quickly resolved by public humiliation and punishment, sometimes even castration.

Like many villagers, Galas has a purely utilitarian view of life and heaps scorn on 'feminist weep sessions'. She has the attitude of street-wise European women who deal with problems on their own terms, instead of running to grievance committees. 'I'm not interested in simple-minded notions of feminism ... I'm thinking in terms of getting the job done effectively. Getting to ... the root of the problem, rather than whining about it,' she concludes -- suggesting that a meat cleaver is a better way to deal with a rapist than years of counselling.

As we near the end of a millennium, rock and pop music are in a slump. Few new bands manage to live up to their initial promise and, with no support from faddish record companies, disappear as quickly as they appeared on the scene. What we need now are musicians and artists who will fuse the disparate parts of our lives into new wholes. A synthesis is required where the old is recovered to bring meaning to the new.

With her operatic handling of themes such as isolation, abandonment and raw sexuality, the polyphonous talents of Diamanda Galas are good start. She's not a nice girl. She's the Maenad locked up in the cellar of suburban repression and denial. Her explosion into the light of the world brings with it a synthesis of ancient choral music, poetry, theatre, the spirituality of black gospel music, jazz and experimental music. Her strong identification with the image of the romantic homosexual outlaw and kamikaze-like political tactics puts her streets ahead of the current lot of poseurs who twiddle buttons for an hour or two and call it music.

If you are interested in other articles by Dmetri Kakmi email him at dmetri@eisa.net.au

Check out our Wrecka Stow for sound links to some Diamanda Galas