Village Voice, NY
Sept 14 2005
For the Erased
Diamanda Galás commemorates victims of a long-forgotten Turkish
ethnic cleansing
by LD Beghtol
August 29th, 2005 4:22 PM
photo: tinazimmer.com
See also:
Podcast: An Audio Guide to This Week in Music
NEW! Clubrat Special by Robert Christgau
Ages ago at college in her native California, singer, composer, and
cultural provocatrice Diamanda Galás 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, Galás 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 – appropriately 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. Galás 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 – both far from home
and in his homeland – as well as for “born outlaws,” as Galás calls
homosexuals, echoing Genet.
Informed by excerpts from the Armenian Orthodox liturgy and the
traditional amanethes, or improvisatory lamentations sung at Greek
funerals, Galás 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 – familiar to those who know her crushing
Plague Mass (1990) or Schrei X (1996) – Defixiones’ real power lies in
those seductively lyrical, quiet passages that occur just before
Galás 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, Galás funeral
mass is cathartic, but neither glib nor sentimental. Any redemption
is hard-won.
I spoke with Miss Galás who has lived in the East Village for the
past 10 years, on two occasions in mid August. Over multiple
cappuccinos – caffeine being her current drug of choice – she 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 – I hated being the poster girl for the
AIDS epidemic. It had to be done, but I hated it. I never meant to be
political – 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] – a great, great poet – who 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 – home to Assyrians, Armenians, Greeks, and Jews, who for
centuries traded languages, songs, ideas, histories – and 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 – it 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 – my 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 – and 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 – about 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 – American 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 – or 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 – especially 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 – to 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 – it 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.
For more information about the Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian
genocides, Black September, and Galás’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: