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Village Voice

For the Erased

Diamanda Gal commemorates victims of a long-forgotten Turkish ethnic cleansing
by LD Beghtol

August 29th, 2005

Ages ago at college in her native California, singer, composer, and
cultural provocatrice Diamanda Gal abandoned the study of science to
pursue her true passion: experimental music. But biochemistry’s loss
is our gain; over the last two decades, her controversial works have
earned her a place high in the avant-garde music pantheon. Fearlessly
outspoken, frighteningly knowledgeable, and dangerously openhearted,
Gal dedicates her latest work, Defixiones: Orders From the Dead
to the estimated 3 million to 4 million victims of the Armenian,
Assyrian, and Anatolian Greek “ethnic cleansing” committed by the
Ottoman Turks between 1914 and 1923. Since 1999, Defixiones has
been performed to near unanimous acclaim at prestigious venues the
world over, from London’s Royal Festival Hall to the Sydney Opera
House, from the Athens National Opera to Mexico City’s Universidad
del Claustro de Sor Juana. Its New York premiere (presented by the
Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s “What Comes After: Cities, Art +
Recovery” international summit) is scheduled for September 8 and 10 at
Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts, Pace University~Wappropriately
enough, just across from City Hall, mere blocks from ground zero.

The word defixiones refers to warnings engraved in lead placed onto
graves in Greece and Asia Minor, threatening desecraters with grievous
harm. Gal uses this term in a broader memorializing sense, urging
us to remember the forgotten dead, the “erased,” the massacred. Her
epic performance for solo voice, piano, and electronics speaks for
the poet-author in exile~Wboth far from home and in his homeland~Was
well as for “born outlaws,” as Gal calls homosexuals, echoing Genet.

Informed by excerpts from the Armenian Orthodox liturgy and the
traditional amanethes, or improvisatory lamentations sung at Greek
funerals, Gal 70-minute masterwork showcases both her astounding
vocal technique and her enormous capacity for rage, compassion,
defiance, and ferocious emotionalism. Though at times truly fearsome
in its raw, insistent pathos~Wfamiliar to those who know her crushing
Plague Mass (1990) or Schrei X (1996)~WDefixiones’ real power lies
in those seductively lyrical, quiet passages that occur just before
Gal wail of existential anguish erupts in reverberant majesty. Iraqi
artist-scholar Selim Abdullah notes, “The sentiment, strength . . . and
sensitivity contained in this Saturnian representation go back to the
very aspects the Greeks gave to a whole Occidental culture.” Awash in
blood and tears, and haunted by images of unspeakable (and until now,
largely unspoken) butchery, Gal funeral mass is cathartic, but neither
glib nor sentimental. Any redemption is hard-won.

I spoke with Miss Gal who has lived in the East Village for
the past 10 years, on two occasions in mid August. Over multiple
cappuccinos~Wcaffeine being her current drug of choice~Wshe dazzled
me with her famous intelligence and often barbed wit. Onstage she’s
a mythic figure come to life; in person she is perhaps even more
mesmerizing.

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Few people in America, other than those of Greek, Armenian, or
Assyrian descent, seem to have heard of this horror. Why is it so
unknown? This country discusses one or two genocides and markets them
in very contrived ways. They don’t write about them truthfully, the
way [author and concentration camp survivor] Primo Levi did. Think
of Spielberg and the legions of mediocrity he has propagated.

And there’s the conflicting numbers, and . . . What does it matter if
it was 6 million or 2 million or 200? Genocide is genocide. Every
culture has its particular way of killing and torturing its
enemies. And the Turks are still trying to cover it up by calling it
deportation, but that’s just another word for “death sentence.”

You’re perceived as the voice of the fallen and forgotten. Is
that something you’ve chosen? No~WI hated being the poster girl
for the AIDS epidemic. It had to be done, but I hated it. I never
meant to be political~W I’m an artist. An artist can only speak for
herself. But if you get particularly good at something it has a sort of
universality, and then it has a certain audience, and you’re answerable
for that. Like Adon [Syrian-born poet Adon Ali Ahmed Said]~Wa great,
great poet~Wwho is seen as the voice of a “leftist movement” of some
sort, but he’s only writing about what is truth to him.

How did you come to create Defixiones? My father is an Anatolian
Greek. All my life he’s talked about how the finest Greek culture
was from Anatolia~Whome to Assyrians, Armenians, Greeks, and Jews,
who for centuries traded languages, songs, ideas, histories~Wand how
many of these cultures are indistinguishable from one another. So
the notion of racial purity there is just absurd. He also told me
about the atrocities committed by the Turks against Greeks from Asia
Minor. But the direct catalyst was an interview I saw with Dr. [Jack]
Kevorkian, who said, “I’m Armenian, I know what torture is all about. I
know the difference between homicide and helping people end a life
of misery.” He was so articulate, and he was discussing Greek Stoic
philosophy and the Armenians in the same breath, which I found very
unusual at the time. So in 1998 I said to myself: It’s time to do
this work.

Later I read Peter Balakian’s book Black Dog of Fate, which talks
about what being an Armenian in America means~Wit means you’re
invisible. It’s the same with the Greeks. Most people think of Greek
culture as a dead culture: Socrates and Aristotle and the statues
. . . And they think Assyrians are the same as Syrians.

Then, as a fellow at Princeton in 1999, I studied texts by Giorgos
Seferis and others in preparation for a performance at the Vooruit
Festival at the Castle of Ghent [in Belgium]. Defixiones was more a
song cycle then, with [the underground Greek protest music known as]
rembetika and works by Paul Celan, Henri Michaux, and César Vallejo. I
concentrated on exiled poets like the Anatolian Greek refugees of the
1920s~Wmy father’s people. The premiere was on September 11, 1999,
which marked the anniversary of the reign of terror under Charles V,
who persecuted homosexuals, women thought to be witches, and other
heretics.

Defixiones is somewhat a work in progress? Yes. Currently I’m
using texts by Giorgos Seferis, [who] is like my bible~Wand Nikos
Kazantzakis, who people will know from his novel The Last Temptation
of Christ. And Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose poem is addressed to the
people who survived. Everyone just hated him. And Yannis Ritsos. And
“The Dance” by Siamanto, with its description of brides being burned
alive. And the pro-genocide poem “Hate,” which was published by [the
Turkish newspaper] Hürriyet and broadcast by the BBC in 1974, right
before the invasion of Cyprus~Wabout why the Turks should decapitate
the Greeks.

September is such a politically charged month . . . Yes, starting
with the destruction of Smyrna in September 1922. And Black September
1955, when Turkish officials waged a disinformation campaign stating
that Greeks had bombed the consulate in Thessalon resulted in the
desecration of Greek churches and the mutilation and murder of priests
and other men. And the Black September of Ariel Sharon’s going into
Lebanon in ’82. He was doing a real con job. And then the situation
in America in 2001 . . .

Your aggressive style and disturbing subject matter automatically
put you outside the mainstream. Yet your music has a surprisingly
broad appeal. Well, I’ve been creating sacred masses, which are not
exactly a popular art form in this country today. But they’re meant
to be, literally, for the people. The American idea of a populist
art form is rap. Some of it is good, but most is appalling in that it
promotes stupidity and the abuse of the same groups that monotheist
totalitarian governments persecute: women, homosexuals, and anyone
who doesn’t speak precisely your language.

You must get tons of hate mail. Fundamentalists of all sorts despise
me. I’m attacked by my own people too~WAmerican Greek men who are homo-
phobic and think everything I say is heresy. I got shit recently
from a Jewish promoter about doingDefixiones in Mexico. She asked
me if I really believed people would be interested. And I thought:
“Please don’t insult my intelligence~Wor theirs. They’ll understand
the concept of genocide as it has occurred and continues to occur to
so many people around the world . . . ”

I want to perform Defixiones in Istanbul and Smyrna. The psychic
manifestations of violence can be just as devastating as the
physical acts~Wespecially when people refuse to recognize them. It’s
depersonalizing. I have a line in INSEKTA: “Believe me, believe
me.” Not being believed can kill.

Who are your fans? People who find it necessary to think for themselves
in order to survive, because they’re damned by the fact they don’t
agree with the mediocrity that society shoves down their throats. They
rise above this by continuing to educate themselves. This is especially
true of homosexuals, who are born outside the law anyway. They’re
still figuratively and literally buried alive by the Egyptians and
Turks. Here in New York they’re visited upon by the Aesthetic Realism
Foundation and treated with electroshock. In Iran, they hang teenage
“infidels.” It’s unbelievable that ethnic groups still shut out
those who can be so disciplined and organized, and who can do great
things. [Gay men] either disappear completely or they address the
situation. They’ve had to~Wto save their own lives. They are great
fighters. I say these are the first soldiers you should enlist, not the
last. This is the man to whom you should say, “Will you be my brother?
Will you help me?”

Will the Turkish government ever admit these atrocities? I think it
will be forced to, through the ongoing work of their own scholars,
both old and young, and by artists and writers who want to be part
of the rest of the world, despite the horrific censorship that the
Turkish government exercises over them. My website is listed as a
hate site, which is completely ridiculous. I do not hate the Turkish
scholars who are trying to address true events in the world. There
are many Turks who want to see things change, but they’re not given
the opportunity to express themselves. When they do, they get sent
to prison or mental asylums. Midnight Express is absolutely the truth.

But until the government officially apologizes, there is no reason
for it to be accepted by the European Union. You must admit what
you’ve done~Wit shows that your present actions will be mandated by
the apology for your past actions. But until this happens there can
be no trust at all.

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For more information about the Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian genocides,
Black September, and Galas’s work, see: diamandagalas.com “Voices
of Truth” series: hellenic-genocide.com/voices-of-truth”Before the
Silence” archival news reports series, run by Sofia Kontogeorge Kostos:
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