The New York Times
Sept 10 2005
Unbearable Grief Given Full-Throated Voice
By BERNARD HOLLAND
Published: September 10, 2005
Diamanda Galas does what a lot of people want to do and don’t: stand
up in the middle of a crowd and yell like crazy. In the 1980’s she
was our princess of the primal scream. If we allowed our discontents
to seep out through narrow vents of politeness, Ms. Galas’s misery
arrived in hot unencumbered blasts.
Phot:
Richard Termine for The New York Times
Diamanda Galas performing “Defixiones, Orders From the Dead,” which
includes taped recitation and film projections along with her howls.
Forum: Popular Music
She is back with “Defixiones, Orders From the Dead” at Pace
University, a one-woman performance piece colored by loud, echoing
amplification, taped recitation, film projections and deep bass
drones. They are no match for Ms. Galas’s howls of disapproval and
dire predictions of world conflagration. She pounds the piano, holds
forth at the lectern, dances with microphones in each hand or goes on
her knees.
These are not your ordinary yells, but rather a repertory of
skillfully modulated moans, shrieks, whoops, wobbles, gurgles, stage
whispers and spitting consonants. None bear good news. Indeed,
“Defixiones” remembers, according to a press release, “Armenian,
Assyrian, Anatolian and Pontic Greek genocides that occurred between
1914 and 1923.” The texts draw from all those languages with English
and Spanish thrown in. The title refers to inscriptions typical of
Middle Eastern gravesites, threatening with curses those who would
desecrate the dead.
Thursday’s eager listeners at the Schimmel Center for the Arts were
mostly under 30 and evidently looking for something different.
Contrariness is the business of young people, and they got it here in
large doses. Acceptance of Ms. Galas’s art depends on one’s
definition of overkill. First there are the props: a darkened stage,
four burning candelabra, and lighting that both obscures and sends
hot blasts of brightness toward to the audience. Then there is Ms.
Galas herself, draped head to toe in black and moving in the shadows
with Robert Wilson-like stateliness.
Ms. Galas’s strengths are also her fatal weaknesses. Relentless grief
is indeed the intended message, but after an hour of this 75-minute
piece, what begins as legitimately unbearable becomes merely tedious.
The sentiments pour out in an unvaried monochrome of mood, and Ms.
Galas’s mood is terrible. Given no air to breathe, the onlooker
suffocates. Even the hippest of Thursday’s enthusiasts were twitching
at the drawn-out coda of “Defixiones.”
Diamanda Galas is, on the other hand, a genuine original and a
living, breathing survivor of a largely vanished downtown scene. She
is also vocally and technically well armed to do what she does. Those
with a taste for the extravagant and a willingness to share her
outrage should go to the repeat performance tonight.
“Defixiones” will be performed again tonight at 8 at the Schimmel
Center for the Arts, Pace University, 3 Spruce Street, between Park
Row and Gold Street, Lower Manhattan.