Michael Halsband Acclaimed Greek singer Diamanda
Galas will be performing her solo show, "Defixiones" on
Thursday in Royce Hall.
By Anthony Bromberg
Daily Bruin Reporter
This Thursday, a ripple of enlightenment comes to inhabit and
encompass the consciousness of UCLA. That pebble in the great lake
is singer and performer Diamanda Galas. She will perform her show
“Defixiones: Will and Testament: Orders From the Dead”
in Royce Hall.
She brings with her a three-and-a-half octave vocal range that
John Paul Jones jumped at the chance to collaborate with, and that
Oliver Stone jumped to put in a movie that has knocked over in its
wake, a large population of political and social conservatives, as
well as some nervous governments.
“One thing I have to say is I’m Greek,” said
Galas in a phone interview.
Her show “Defixiones” is about the Turk genocides of
such peoples as the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. The show
includes pieces in ten different languages. The pieces consist of
Galas’ original writings, numbers from American blues
artists, like John Lee Hooker and Blind Lemon Jefferson, and
material written by exiled poets.
“Many of the texts are from martyred poets,” Galas
said. “This kind of work is very rare.”
“Defixiones” features Diamanda performing solo with
only her voice and a piano. She has been developing the piece for
four years and first performed it in 1999. This is its premiere in
the United States.
“I think that in “˜Defixiones…’ there’s
a certain kind of serious element,” Galas said. “This
has been a continuous process. And it’s something I want to
do in Istanbul. A lot of people say it’s
impossible.”
The Turkish use of disinformation and its denial and
disassociations with past genocides, are at the heart of
Galas’ work.
“The work kind of deals a lot with superpowers’
interest in different countries. The destroying of
inhabitants,” Galas said. “The Afghans are just playing
around next to the Turks “¦ they’re amateurs next to the
Turks.”
The past Thanksgiving holiday is not Diamanda Galas’
favorite holiday, but she does feel it is a particularly
appropriate time to perform her work in the United States.
The Turkish government has its own ways of reconciling past
history to present political agenda, according to Galas.
“They say here’s a lot of money … and they give
[other governments] money, and they want to have these Turkish
martyr days,” Galas said. “It’s unfortunate,
because a lot of the Turkish radical students aren’t into
it.”
The Turkish students in many cases aren’t allowed to know
about it, and here the topic is rarely even brought up, according
to Galas.
“It’s not a subject that interests many people
“¦ and that’s why these people are becoming extinct. And
it’s a very very scary thing,” Galas said.
“People are usually taken aback by this.”
Galas called Royce Hall, because she had performed her show
“Plague Mass” here ten years ago.
“I find it particularly to be a good and serious place for
the work I’m doing,” Galas said. “And you have a
great number of people of these ethnic groups in Los Angeles, and
the work is dedicated to them.”
Galas’ choice of a college campus in introducing
“Defixiones” to the United States, is important to her
as well.
“I think it’s an important population to tell the
truth to,” Galas said. “It’s a time in their life
when they’re open to hearing shit.”
The UCLA show will incorporate a new piece titled “The
World Is Going Up In Flames.” The piece is about the 1922
genocide of the Greeks.
“They still call it the exchange of populations, but
that’s a complete cover,” Galas said. “That was
always the way to completely destroy the heretics, to burn them in
their church. There is something decisively evil in
that.”
The title of the entire show, “Defixiones: Will and
Testament: Orders from the Dead” comes from hexes that were
put on the graves of many of those killed in the genocide.
“This is the only kind of threat that could be used in a
country where it’s legal to dig up graves,” Galas said.
“They’re just warnings.”
Commitment of this kind to these issues comes naturally to
Diamanda Galas. She seems driven to keep saying things, to put out
there what is relevant and perhaps neglected by less turbulent
parts of the world.
Her show should prove no less turbulent.
“I go from being very very soft, to being very very
loud,” Galas said.
Regardless of her volume level, the content of her words are as
equally important as the tone of her songs.
“I only have one shot on this planet “¦ I prefer to
tell the truth “¦ not for any religious ideas, just to keep me
awake,” Galas said. “That’s quite a commitment,
let me tell you.”