When singers of the calibre of Antony Hegarty and PJ Harvey point to Diamanda Galas as a vocal influence it is time to sit up and listen. The 55-year-old Greek-American, based in New York, has spent more than 30 years on the world’s stages, although this is going to be her first appearance in Brighton.
As a singer and performer she is known for her outspoken views as much as her amazing voice. She first came to public notice performing the lead in the Amnesty International-inspired opera about the torture of a Turkish woman for alleged treason, Un Jour Comme Un Autre, in 1979. In the mid-1980s she released The Masque Of Red Death trilogy of albums lambasting the Catholic church for their early bigotry towards AIDS sufferers. She performed the same work in New York’s Cathedral Of Saint John The Divine while naked and drenched in fake blood to mark the death of her brother, playwright Philip Dimitri-Galas, from the disease in 1991.
Human rights are still very high on her agenda. Only this week she wrote an article, Godhead And Anal Glue, highlighting some of the unspeakable atrocities being carried out by the Iraqi militia on homosexuals in the name of Allah, without any world leader raising a complaint. And the show being performed in Brighton, Songs Of Exile, is dedicated to the artists who have suffered exile from their homeland or are treated as outlaws. “The idea is that these writers all experience a living death,” she says. “They are exiled from their families and language and culture, everything that is familiar to them, and put in another country where they have nothing but memories and sadness.”
One example is Paul Célan’s Todesfuge (Death Fugue). “He is a poet who saw his parents executed by the Nazis and was exiled to Paris, where he eventually drowned himself in the Seine,” she says. The programme will take in laments by Pontic Greek refugees, improvised lamentations from Asia Minor and the Middle East, traditional American tunes such as Be Sure That My Grave Is Kept Clean, and her own compositions from her long career.
Starts 8pm. £20, £17.50, £10 (restricted view)
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