In Greece, when a woman lost her husband or child to war, she would sing mirologhia, songs of mourning and lament. The songs were characterized by their spontaneity---the woman would find the words to sing, to wail, really, at that very moment. In the same way, amanahdes, which were part of the rembetiko and smyrneiko tradition of the early 1920's, told of sorrow and pain, usually for the lost homeland (Asia Minor) and of displacement, genocide, and alienation in a new land.
Diamanda Galas draws upon the pain of her ancestors, and makes parallels with old African-American spirituals, in much of her work. She is an artist who is steeped in mourning and lament for a lost land, or loved one, or world, and her latest work, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, keeps her marinating in ancestral distress.
Recorded mostly at a 2006 concert at the Knitting Factory, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, features Ms. Galas on piano, and showcases her multi-octave range. This album showcases her affinity for the blues, with covers of songs that direct the music into new and dark directions.
The songs focus on lost love, and loss through death, areas not unfamiliar in Galas' earlier works, where she dove into the horrors of the AIDS plague and the genocide of Armenians.
In Guilty, Galas gives us a very intimate performance with a variety of songs by other composers. Her deconstruction of the old spiritual "O Death," has Galas taking the Ralph Stanley classic, and infusing it with an incredible collection of vocal extensions and wailings that sound like a combination of Greek mourning songs and the traditional blues sounds.
If you want your guilt, your lament, your mourning, your alienation, to be vocalized and, perhaps, exorcised, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty may be able to provide you with the darkness your soul needs.
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