Diamanda Galas was born on Aug 29, 1955, in San Diego, US to Greek parents. She is an avant-garde performance artist, vocalist, and composer.
Diamanda Galas is known for her highly original and politically charged performance works, as well as her memorable rendition of jazz and blues. Galas is a resident of New York City since 1989. Galas studied both classical and jazz since a young age, accompanying her father’s gospel choir before joining his New Orleans-style band, and performing as a piano soloist with the San Diego Symphony at 14.
Galas first rose to international prominence with her albums Wild Women with Steak Knives (1980) and the album The Litanies of Satan (1982). Later she created the controversial requiem for those dead and dying of AIDS “Plague Mass”, which she performed at Saint John the Divine Cathedral in New York City and released as a double CD in 1991. In 1994, Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and Diamanda Galas collaborated in the visionary rock album, The Sporting Life.
Since the early 1990s Galas has worked on several musical and theatrical works including: The Singer (1992). a compilation of blues and gospel standards. Vena Cana (1993) a work exploring AIDS dementia and clinical depression, Schrei 27 (1996) a radical solo piece for voice and ring modulators about torture in isolation, Malediction and Prayer (1998) a setting of jazz and blues as well as love and death poems by Charles Baudelaire, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Salvadoran guerrilla fighter and poet Miguel Huezo Mixco, occasionally fused with the virtuosic singing of the Amanes (improvised lamentation from Asia Minor). La Serpanta Canta (2004) a greatest-hits collection from Hank Williams to Ornette Coleman, and Defixiones, Will and Testament (2004), a 80-minute memorial tribute to the Armenian, Greek and Assyrian victims of the Turkish genocides from 1914-1923.
“I’m not Goth, I am Greek. Goth means German.
Being Greek is not a simple geographical fact, it is a spiritual fact.”
Galas has contributed her voice and music to several films including Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, Oliver Stones’ Natural BornKillers, Mercedes Moncada Rodriguez’s El Immortal (The Immortal), as well as other films by Wes Craven, Clive Barker, Derek Jarman, Hideo Nakata, and many others.
Her CD, Guilty Guilty Guilty, a compilation of tragic and homicidal love songs, was released by Caroline in the U.S. and MUTE UK worldwide on April 1, 2008; You’re My Thrill, was released in 2009.
Read Diamanda’s interview at Hellenism.Net
