It is difficult to distill the force of nature that is Diamanda Galás down to a neat two-paragraph introduction, especially for the uninitiated. After all, Diamanda is not exactly a household name on this side of the pond. I first discovered who she was from a Babes In Toyland fanzine. Really. The Babes' singer mentioned Ms. Galás as one of her influences and how she tried to imitate (to much lesser effect, she admitted) Diamanda's schizophrenic vocal incantations with her own raw, thrash-y girl punk band. A bastardization to be sure, even though it wouldn't be until 2 years later that I would first hear Galás' music. Once I moved somewhere with a real record store, first semester of my freshman year at college, I snatched up a well-worn copy of 1989’s The Singer. I was not disappointed. Beautiful, confrontational, mournful, and challenging; Galás makes her demands from the first throttling notes of the piano intro. My friends and I quickly became obsessed. Loving her music was like having an exquisite weapon all to ourselves, sometimes literally. When dealing with obnoxious neighbors, we'd simply crank one of her howling, otherworldly soprano solos, turn the speakers towards the wall and never have problems again.

photo by KRISTOFER BUCKLE

For the past two nights of February 14th, I’ve stood feet from the stage at the Knitting Factory to witness her annual rendition of psychotic love songs; the famed “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre”. Over the phone, would she be the solemn, solitary singer I had seen one year, or the sardonic, audience-ribbing smart-mouth I'd seen the next? Turns out, a bit of both, but more than anything else she is incredibly warm, patient and totally on top of her shit. Our discussion touched upon Nina Simone, LSD, the Grammy Awards & ex-boyfriends who can't sing.

You topped our reader poll this year for best live performance for your Valentine's Day Massacre and you just released an excellent live record [Guilty Guilty Guilty]. What's one of your most powerful or memorable live performances as an audience member?

Well, I don't go out very much, so this was many years ago in Barcelona when I heard El Camerón de la Isla. He's a gypsy singer from the south of Spain, he was one of the greatest Flamenco singers ever. When I heard him sing I said, “Oh my God, this is going to change everything”. I had not done a lot of work using my lower voice, I'd been using a lot of soprano voice and vocal techniques that were different from the mainstream, and when I heard El Camerón, I said OK; I gave myself permission to use that voice because it resonated in such a way. He had a very weird reputation for taking LSD and doing heroin and then going on stage and performing, and I don't know how he was able to perform, at least with LSD, I can't imagine it. But, whatever, I don't even care, it's just bizarre to think of Flamenco in that context. He was wild, and he started out very young doing music, then he got into a lot of lifestyle things that ended up killing him at 42 which is such a pity because I felt like he was a blood brother [to me] of some sort. This was just after I'd released Saint of the Pit (1987) and You Must Be Certain of the Devil (1988), so it reaffirmed my musical desire to use that voice for the first time in my career.

I got criticism for this. Every time you change your style, someone thinks that you changed your style because you had to, and they miss the old shit. That stuff makes me completely exhausted, because if you have any range at all then you want to try everything. Every time I do something new, I hear [that] it's because I can't do what I did before. [Laughs] It's very funny! Like playing the piano; I've played piano since I was five years old, and when I stopped playing the piano and just did solo voice, the people who knew me as a piano player said, “what happened to the piano?” I started hearing the lead lines and I wanted to do solo voice. When I went back to the piano, people said “what happened to the solo voice? What are you playing the piano for? Are you trying to be commercial?” and I'm like, for Chrissakes, I used to play piano concertos when I was fourteen years old! It's basically the orchestra of all instruments. If you can play the piano, then you have an orchestra in front of you, and there is so much literature for the piano. I should give up an instrument that gives you such a huge range of harmonic abilities? I have to listen to one moron after the next and it truly amazes me. A lot of musicians that I respect have gone through a lot of changes. If you think of Coltrane or Miles Davis, you hear so many records they did are very different from each other. The heat they used to take for that was pretty enormous. So I just think, “OK, well...fine,” but it would be nice to be accepted when I'm alive instead of when I'm dead. I would prefer that, that would be kind of refreshing. Especially when you see something idiotic like the Grammy awards. I turned it on last night and I almost threw up, I just thought, my God, these people are such idiots.

I know. Coldplay? [nominated for 7 Grammys in 2008]. They are horrible.

Thank you! And all this shit, these fucking Foo Fighters...God, that guy [Dave Grohl], I just want to put a fuckin' bullet right in his fucking mouth. He's sneering at the audience 'cause he thinks he's too superbad to be there, but he is there. He's such a horrible musician that it's the best he can do. He's come really far for being such a crap musician. But, all the singers on that [nomination ceremony], none of them could really sing. You have Christina Aguilera trying to do Nina Simone...when Nina Simone was alive, none of you motherfuckers gave a fuck about her, and now what? None of you are fucking innovators, you don't have a fucking clue.

Now they have a whole evening about who's nominated for the Grammy awards. That made me sick. It's part and parcel of the problems I'm having right now which is that my record company was sold to EMI. So I am officially an EMI artist which means that it's hell getting my records distributed. [The EMI people] think I'm a freak. I'll sell out 2 concerts in Madrid for thousands of people, and they still won't come to a show. I don't like going to Spain, and touring Portugal and not seeing one record [of mine for sale], EMI won't even show up to sell the records. And they won't put them in the stores, I mean what the fuck is that?

There's this whole con the record companies have got where they have endless award ceremonies to keep promoting the same crap. I think about the rest of us and I think, really, they're just waiting for us to die so they can sell our back catalog. I've decided to start my own company here. I'll do a few records for Mute because I've been on Mute for a long time, but I'm not gonna put up with this crap, this is just insane.

I mean “Porgy and Bess” [the song Aguilera sang at the Grammy ceremony] in 2008? I've got nothing against “Porgy and Bess” if it's Nina Simone singing it, but what about all the innovators who are doing music now, and their music doesn't ever get heard? And so, what, in 100 years, they're gonna have me on a video [screen] and someone will be singing with me? If I were a goddess I would fucking have them speared to death! [Laughs] I'd put a spear up their asses and say “shut up, bitch! Don't fucking sing my song!”

There must be a special place in hell for people who fuck up a Nina Simone song, because it's sacred, you know?

It's really fucking sacred, and she really suffered. I used to have trouble with her because her recordings were so inconsistent. I don't like her records when she [was] on heroin, they're bad. But...I can understand how dejected she must've been to go on a gig and then suddenly realize [that] the [promoter] wasn't about to give her the money. So she'd have to stand up and start screaming, “Give me the fucking money, or I won't do the concert!” And she's doing this in front of the audience. After awhile, you'd be like, “well, what am I coming home to at the end of the day? I'm coming home to a shot of heroin.” I'd feel sorry for myself too.

The whole racial thing must've been hell at the time. And she wasn't an attractive woman, by anyone's standards, she just wasn't. She couldn't get over like other people [did] with their looks. It must have been really hard. She didn't have Billie Holiday or Sarah Vaughn's looks. She couldn't sell herself as a sexual image. It had to be just because of the music. How many people are interested in just the music. Ha!

You've stated before that you prefer performing to studio recording.

I'm coming from an old jazz tradition where you release a lot of live records, which allows you to record in spaces that are somewhat interesting. Recording at the Knitting Factory is a blast, I've gotten a lot of great stuff out of there. There's a wonderful audience, the space is great and they have a great sound system. I would like to go into a studio because you can do some multi-track stuff which you can't do live. In any case, my record company would not pay me to go into the studio at this point, unless you're someone who sells millions and millions of records, you're not going to get the money to go into the studio. Unless it's your own studio and I'm trying to figure out where and how I'm going to do that.

Who is your best audience?

I've had great audiences everywhere. In Medellín, Colombia, and more recently, in Madrid, Spain and Athens, Greece; I really loved them. The audiences there were very emotional and very quiet, but they understood the words which is nice since I sing in a lot of languages. They understood the power and the meaning behind the songs. I have wonderful audiences in London too, but a lot of people in London are immigrants.

If you had an unlimited budget to produce whatever type of performance you could imagine, what could we expect?

I'll speak within a reasonable context, and that would be the piece that I'm working on now. I would do a combination installation and performance of this work, it's called “Hex”. The elements I will leave to your imagination at this point. I don't want to talk about it because I've found that when I talk about performances that I want to do, someone else manages to get the money before me and they end up doing it! [Laughs]. Like my performance Insekta, [translated as "Insignificant": her 1993 performance about a survivor who encounters repeated traumas within an inescapable enclosed space] I only performed it a few times and then 2 people actually did pieces called Insekta. It's not the same piece but the title and many of the ideas are the same, and it's like, Jesus Christ, don't you have any fucking pride? I'd rather not give out the deck of cards until I get the money.

And in this country, getting money for original work is so incredibly difficult. My performances in the last years have been limited by the lack of funds for original shows. Presenters generally want a production they think they can sell, [so they] ask me to do the voice/piano work, and I'm happy to do that. But the reason they ask for that rather than a run of the more experimental work is because they know they can get a couple thousand people in there, and they can pay me the way I should be paid, and they can pay themselves. I do some of the experimental work in unusual places like Canary Islands and the Basque country in Northern Spain, places that no one is really aware of.

I think probably the art world is the place for my experimental work, and that's an area I have to approach. I'm not a very social person, as far as going out to parties and and meeting people. [People who do that] are the people who generally get money. I have nothing against that, it's just not something I like to do; it makes my skin crawl. I'm really selfish about my time; I like to be alone a lot. And really, when you're on stage you're alone, because you're doing what you love best, and you have an audience who appreciates what you're doing. Then you can be really alone, and with people at the same time, and that's a beautiful combination.

You're from a musical family, and growing up you were encouraged to play instruments but discouraged from singing. What was it like when you started singing and did that have an effect on the ultimate intensity & singularity of your vocals?

I think it did because my vocal style began as something completely uneducated, just something I wanted to do. I broke a lot of rules. Not being encouraged [to sing] put me in this place where I just did exactly what I wanted to do, because there was clearly no money in it, and no reason to do it, other than I had a real passion to do it.

Playing piano with a lot of bands, I was just really sick of it. I wanted to be the head of the band. In those days, it was the post-Ornette Coleman phase where the piano was often the least important part of the band. It was kind of an ignominious position to be in, I didn't like it. Horns are inspired by the voice, which is actually what Ornette's saxophone sounds like, a vocal instrument really. The voice is the leader of the band if you can make it the leader of the band. But that means you have to have a powerful technique in order to do instrumental singing. It's very virtuosic by necessity. If you hear a lot of colors, just like a painter works with a lot of color, then you have to be able to make it. If you hear something and you can't do it, then you're limited. I thought, “I'm hearing something, so I better start to study so I can do long phrases with lots of timbres in them and lots of changes.”

On YouTube there's a clip of “Skótoseme” [from her 1994 collaboration with former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones], which means “Kill Me”, it's a Greek expression, and it's kind of a love song. In that performance people can hear long phrases of changing timbres, and there's no limitation. I can go from multiphonic [throat singing] to speaking and then go and sing high D, and there's no problem in making those transitions. That's usually not done in improvisational singing. There are very few singers who do that. I don't think anyone is doing that now, because they haven't done the work to do it. There's a couple of young women in alternative music that I like, but in general they sound kind of limited to me. Because they either get into a guttural thing—but they can't sustain high notes or even go there—or they do this pretty, pretty shit, but they have no real power.

And the men are the most pathetic of all, really just hideous. When they try to get into free improvisation with the voice, I want to throw up because it is so poor. Most of the men who've imitated me, they can't do it. When they do the high notes, they get into this falsetto and it's so bad! It really is the opposite of an aphrodisiac. I told one of them who was an ex-boyfriend to just stop, just...juggling, try that! You know, strip! Please don't sing, it's so out of tune, it's so bereft of ideas... It's only because I'm being polite that I'm not saying who it is. That would be too cruel. My father always says, when a man's down, don't kick him while he's on the floor. Although I may change my opinion at some point to “make sure he's down and then kick him on the floor!” [Laughs]. A lot of women have to do it that way, we're not always as strong as men are.

photo by KRISTOFER BUCKLE

The performance you just mentioned I saw on YouTube [from The Jon Stewart Show on MTV] and if I'm not mistaken, that was one of the only times you've appeared on television in this country.

You are right! There was that, and I was on Night Music [on NBC. Originally called Sunday Night, later known as Michelob Presents Night Music] in 1989, [music producer] Hal Willner invited me. It was hosted by [jazz musician] David Sanborn, and he was a great player, people don't actually hear what he's capable of playing, but he can play just about anything.

Conan O'Brian would be a perfect show to do. But it's fear of what the audience or producers will do, fear of what I might do on stage, fear of the performance work I've done...like at some of the New Music Seminars where I stand up on the table and start insulting the audience. I think they think that I'll use the context to insult someone. When it's appropriate to do that I'll do it, but I wouldn't. But you can't ever say never, so they're always taking a risk. Although I don't have anything personal against Conan O'Brian, so I wouldn't have any reason to attack him on his own show. I heard that he invites some good performers and he's likable.

Somebody I always wished had a music show was [newscaster] Ed Bradley. He came to my show and he was really interested in all the multiphonics. I had people like Strother Martin, when he was alive, some very interesting people coming to shows and I really wish they had come backstage so we could have some conversation. Especially Strother Martin, one of my favorite actors in the world.

Who are some musicians you respect?

La Lupe, Stelios Kazantzidis, Bülent Ersoy (a transsexual who can play every instrument and conduct an orchestra—Turkey's most beloved singer), Marinella, John Lee Hooker, Ornette Coleman, Errol Garner, Scriabin, Gloria Lynn, Carmen McCrae, Dinah Washington, Esther Phillips, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Sylvia Sass, Al Green, Sofia Leonardou, Sotria Bellou, Renee Fleming, Juliet Gréco, [Edith] Piaf, Marlene Dietrich, the list is long...

I read that I am a Greek [Middle Eastern Greek, Mikrasiatika] doing the blues, or an opera singer singing the blues; what a load of crap. Ask Leontyne Price if she can sing the blues. A musician is a musician. Ask why Art Tatum could play Bach and jazz and the answer is that his Bach playing made his jazz playing untouchable. It is not necessary to be an unapproachable artist. But some are: Hendrix was a jazz player and R&B player before he moved to England and came up with his own style. I won't even discuss Sun Ra because we are living in a stupid country.

Actually Nina Simone reminds me a bit of Bülent Ersoy; this is what I mean by it being a bit hard for her to find a man. Watch her interviews; there is a transsexual vibe about her in the interviews, which I quite like. But what would a man do with her? It is hard to imagine. They are too soft. The women the Europeans consider heroines are always considered a bit “butchy" for American tastes.

The only music I hear that resembles where American music should go today is Ethiopian music because it combines the knowledge of Byzantium with extra-Ethiopian influences. Keep in mind that Greeks, Ethiopians, and many Egyptians go to the same Byzantine churches, the Greek and Coptic churches. We were raised on the same music.

American people think you go to Ethiopia to claim your heritage, and we all just laugh. Wait 'til you get there, brother. It ain't about black, it's about culture. Culture is under the skin. It is not on top of it. That is “bling”. To us bling is just a cheap rip-off of the ancient masters. So—“too little, too late, too weak, too bad, motherfucker” is what I say to those who do not read. And in the living rooms of my apartments have been many a throwdown over this comment. I laugh.

You've adapted poetry for your lyrics before. What are some other sources like film, literature or art that you draw inspiration from?

As far as adapting poetry, I take poetry [that is] incantational and...lends itself to music. [I] compose the piano music (or electronic multi-tracked music using synthesizers)...to accompany my vocal spoken or spoken and sung interpretations of Paul Celan, Cesar Vallejo, Giorgos Seferis, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Miguel Huezo Mixco, Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said), Gerard de Nerval, Tristan Corbiere, Henri Michaux, Charles Baudelaire, and many other poets. This is ongoing work. It takes a while but I love doing it.

But as far as other art...horror films! Haha! I had a summer where I had broken up with somebody and I had to try to get the guy's face out of my head. So I watched all these insect, reptile and radioactive horror films, where the animals have been mutated through experimentation, and animals turned into humans and humans into animals. In a lot of horror films the soundtracks are phenomenal. I would have to say horror films have been my primary inspiration musically. Nothing Stephen Spielberg would be associated with, none of the really big budget films. Except for a couple of Brian de Palma films, where he used Bernard Herrmann's music, like Sisters. That was a phenomenal film, probably my one of my favorite films of all time.

One of your most revisited subjects (besides homicidal, psychotic love) is mortality and remembering the dead. What, other than your musical catalogue, would you want people to remember about you when you are gone?

I think that I went to the furthest limit of the subjects I discussed, that I really exhausted my subject. I did work about the AIDS epidemic and went further with it. The same goes for my work dealing with isolation and mental illness, I didn't brush the surface of it. I didn't just do the superficial, kind of college-boy irony that is so putrid to me. I got to the bottom of the work that I did, and I didn't waste my life on a bunch of crap.

Diamanda Galás live album Guilty Guilty Guilty is available now. www.diamandagalas.com