#Diamanda Galas #avant-garde #experimental #avant-goth #classical crossover #performance art #operatic #blues #jazz #spoken word #piano #a capella
Diamanda Galas is the kind of singular artist who seems to escape category and time. Her music - usually a mix of voice, piano, and minimal electronics - is more closely aligned to blues and jazz than the classical music she’s often roped in with. And the subject matter of her work is most often dark: genocide, war, abuse, torture. A couple of her records reference the devil and hell and Satan. She once recorded a spoken-word incantation complete with burning witch sounds called "Let Us Praise the Masters of Slow Death." And the one book she wrote is called "The Shit of God. " All that said, her work is ultimately uplifting. This is because Galas doesn’t work in a vacuum. She sings about real-world evils, and you can tell she wants to find solutions: She was once arrested inside New York’s Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in 1989 as part of a demonstration opposing the Church’s stance on AIDS education and distributing condoms in public schools. She’s also an active collaborator, someone who seems to believe in community. She’s worked with avant-garde composers like Iannis Xenakis and John Zorn, but also with Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, synthpop vets Erasure, and industrial pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten—and her voice has been used by at least one black metal band. From: https://pitchfork.com/features/5-10-15-20/9891-the-music-that-made-diamanda-galas/
