Diamanda Galas

Long, long ago, in high school, I was record shopping and came across a cassette called “The Litanies of Satan and Wild Women With Steak Knives (A Homocidal Love Song for Solo Scream).” With a title like that, how could I NOT buy it? It was, of course, a record by Diamanda Galas.

For those who don’t know her, here’s a Wikipedia entry to get you up to speed.

After buying that one cassette, I was hooked. It was so strange and disturbing and fascinating. I continued collecting her albums, and with few exceptions, they are amazing pieces of work.

Recently a friend of mine reinstituted an old tradition of a Sunday “Listening Party” wherein a group of people gather to do some collective intentional listening. She asked me to bring a piece to share, and because I’d just happened to have pulled my collection of Diamanda Galas off the shelf for encoding, and was subsequently on a Diamanda kick (not to mention, it seemed seasonally relevent--Halloween is nearly upon us), I elected to bring a Diamanda piece called “Cris D’Aveugle.”

“Cris D’Aveugle” followed a Balinese gamelan piece called, "Hudjan Mas (Golden Rain)," and was itself followed by a Dock Boggs song (the title of which I can’t recall). In any case, it was an eclectic night, and really cool to sit down with a group of people, many who were strangers, and listen together.

Here’s three Diamanda Galas pieces from her Masque of the Red Death trilogy.

Cris D'Aveugle

Double-Barrel Prayer

Malediction