It's all Greek to some critics

Diamanda Galas, diva of the alternative, has no tolerance for the intolerant.

Don't make Diamanda Galas angry, you wouldn't like her when she's angry. Today she is seething about an Australian opera critic who didn't like her show two nights ago.

"The little imbecile," she laughs.

She's not bitter or precious about getting bad reviews. When your career as a singer and pianist has been based on confrontational, challenging and experimental music you can become immune to criticism.

But in this case she has a right to seethe. That Aussie didn't like her show because he couldn't understand her.

You see, Galas sings in 13 different languages - including Greek, Arabic, and even Assyrian Arabic - during the performance of Defixiones: Will & Testament, Orders from the Dead, last year's album.

That album, and no doubt the performance, is heavy stuff, because it is about the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides perpetrated by Turkey between 1914 and 1923.

"I take this work very seriously and I spend years on it, and years on getting the facts right, and that is why I have absolutely no patience for people who aren't even willing to do any research and then say, 'I feel left out'," Galas says. "Opera critics, like any good opera-goers, are supposed to take the script and study it and then you go to the performance.

"So he didn't understand any of the 13 languages and therefore he felt excluded from the entire event. I'm like, 'Listen bitch, who's fault is that?'

"This was in Melbourne where one third of my audience were Greek. And they understood the work perfectly. And then he says I was dressed like a Greek nun. We don't have Greek Orthodox nuns. What the [expletive] is he talking about.

She is scathing about those who have no time for any language other than English.

I dare not tell her I speak only English, but feel relieved that I did my research about genocide, nudity, vocal technique, blood, and mental hospitals - just some of the things Galas has dabbled in during her music career.

In Auckland she will be performing a tamer work than Defixiones.Called Guilty Guilty Guilty, "it's like blues and country".

Galas, whose voice spans three and a half octaves, can sound like a babbling mental patient, then a tortured cat, then an opera diva, then someone who is deep and soulful. Her albums range from the unlistenable rants of Vena Cava (1993) to the heavy subject matter of Defixiones, to the more normal, but no less challenging, live album Malediction And Prayer (1998).

In 1975, in her 20s, Galas invented a different vocal style after becoming disenchanted with performing free jazz.

"I just thought, 'Ah, I just can't get into it any more'. The voice is the leader of the band, the greatest saxophone and trumpet players have always tried to emulate the vocal sound in their instrument and that's why people like Ornette Coleman were such masters.

"So I thought about that, but I also thought about how interested I was in an unmatrixed use of the voice that is not about music, just something that was purely experimental, and I didn't know what it would be.

"But I just had to get away from music, I was just sick to death of it."

She isolated her herself from the music scene and started using her voice in different ways - from experimentation with different "medicines" (drugs) to singing in sound chambers.

"I don't know what I was trying to do but, I don't know what it was.

"There's no word to describe it, because using a word like 'catharsis' sounds like you have an axe to grind. And the word 'exorcism' also sounds like you've got an axe to grind. It's not really that, it's something else."

She qualifies the term "invention" for her vocal style, paying tribute to the influence of singers who include Paddy Waters, Anette Peacock, and Carmen McCray.

"But if you've spent enough time you come up with your own sound, you definitely do. But it is also predicated - as any good musician will tell you - by having a good ear, and if you hear something you like then it's in your recollection forever.

She says the reaction to her first performances were "not positive.

"In some cases, if it was a little more subtle and arty, then it was positive from some music professors, or music composers.

"But I figure that when you do experimental things with your voice you're taking a risk".

Many of Galas' first concerts were on the late-70s touring circuit of "mental hospitals". New Zealander Graeme Revell, now a leading movie soundtrack composer - also played in these institutions with his industrial dance band SPK.

For experimental musicians such as Galas and Revell the hospitals were among the few places to find an audience.

"There are people in mental hospitals who are lucky to be there, and there are people who are unlucky to be there, who want to escape," Galas says.

"There are so many people who would love to be in them, who don't have the opportunity, especially in America, because all the funding has been cut.

"So that comprises a large proportion of the homeless population and it's a very sad thing."

Galas is a funny fish. Although she is serious about her music, she is not all history lessons and speaking the right dialect.

She is just as happy ranting wildly about a "very camp" and trashy book called the Divine Feud, about the rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford.

A warning though, don't mess with sound: "Sound is our God."

* Diamanda Galas at The Great Hall, Auckland Town Hall, Tuesday

* Best albums: Divine Punishment (1986), You Must Be Certain of the Devil (1988), Plague Mass (1991), Malediction and Prayer (1998), Defixiones: Will & Testament, Orders From the Dead (2004).