GREEK METAL HAMMER
DECEMBER 2009

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DIAMANDA GALÁS
Ta filia sou einai fotia
Pallas Theatre
Tuesday 24 November, 2009
"Heaven Have Mercy..."

The Lady of Darkness sits majestically in front of the piano. Our breaths become shorter, as if ashamed to disturb her. Her fingers start tapping the piano keys and her voice opens its huge black wings. Physical and emotional pain dissect the silence. Our hearing cannot easily bear the avant-garde staircase that this gifted voice of the Underworld climbs up and down. I sit in the fourth row, yet in a few rows in front of me, some people have already gotten up; and some so-called "high society" ladies-- who thought they would spend yet another evening of easy- listening music---- leave The Pallas. "Better for the rest of us" I thought. Not something for everyone. Here the extreme element gets reinstalled in its root, where it counts. Her piano strikes me as a coffin that invites us all inside. I can't see her fingers, but I swear that she wears-- as rings-- death, pain, agony, loss, despair and the longing for love. This female creature who does not forget her nature for a moment, is hard, sometimes too hard, but not heartless. To feel her you will forget that she separates Hell from Paradise. She seems to have been born from the womb of a Greek land that no longer exists, but in Myth. Where the Maenads were synonymous with rapturous fury and were the female companions of Dionysus. So if this God in an attempt to hide his Fall, is now a regular in a Berlin dive bar, I am sure that the one responsible behind the piano music heard in the distance-- is Diamanda. She is the one who sings incantations, curses and prayers with the same passion in French, Greek, German; and she sings English with a strong , Delta blues accent. You have my total respect Diamanda. Your art remains a solid, extreme, and important life experience.

-- Kostas Chronopoulos (Translated into the English by Olga Kalantzis)