Galas’ Powerful Vocals Decry ‘Forgotten’ Tragedy

An interesting crowd showed up at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Thursday for the U.S. premiere of vocalist Diamanda Galas’ newest work, “Defixiones, Will and Testament.”

Neutrally clad middle-agers, perhaps attuned to Galas during her new music/performance art days of the ‘80s, blended easily with the guy in a Motorhead T-shirt, goth rockers and fans of various and sundry hair hues. The mix attested to a unique following for Galas, whose dark, obsessive inventions have attracted listeners from diverse camps.

To be sure, Galas is a demanding presence who seizes the air with her potent vocalizations--in various shades of intense--and also the starkness of her solo stage aura. Sometimes, the sheer uncompromising vision of her music, involving extended vocal techniques, primal screams and ominous chanting, gains a kind of comic relief just by virtue of its glowering ardency.

Here, as with her work about AIDS a decade ago, the subject was too real and historically pressing to allow for kitsch interpretation. She has taken texts from different poets to decry the “forgotten” 20th century genocide, when masses of Armenians, Assyrians and Anatolian Greeks were slaughtered, between 1915 and 1923.

Usually singing over a drone, and playing piano with a clenched intensity matching her singing, Galas worked up a balance of catharsis and mourning, leading up to a chilling spoken-word piece, “The World Is Going Up in Flames.” That was followed by a striking stage moment, as an illusory funnel of sand seemed to spill onstage from above.

Later in the program, variety distracted from the earlier focus, as Galas dipped into her secret life as an extremist blues singer. Still, Galas packed a punch, building up an effectively dense concert experience with surprisingly minimal means.