Totemism

Diamanda Galás, Our Great Lady of Broken Spines, the Misfortuned, and my beloved Rose of Hell, has done it again. But first things first:

La Llorona - The Legend and the Image

La Llorona (the Weeping Woman, The Wailer) is a ghost figure from Mexico; she is the principal character in several migrant legends told on both sides of the border. According to the legend, La Llorona was once a beautiful woman named Maria. In many variations of the tale, Maria’s husband was unfaithful, and out of jealousy, rage, or despair, she is said to have lured her children to a nearby river and drowned them before drowning herself after realizing what she had done. La Llorona is described as a woman who has murdered her children by drowning them in some accounts and by other methods, including feeding them to pigs. Her origin has been the subject of scholarly debate; however, an educated guess would be that she’s possibly traceable to the Aztec goddesses Cihuacoatl and Ixpapalotl.

The three faces of the traditional La Llorona — the temptress who is dangerous to men, the child killer, and the mourning woman — represent different aspects of her character. Wildly revenging herself upon men, her children, and herself, this loving-hating ghost-mother seems to be the explicit embodiment of loss and disequilibrium. La Llorona never finds her children. She weeps, walks, and searches forever, seeking revenge, restitution, completion, and rest. The state of disequilibrium is never corrected. Whoever hears her crying either suffers misfortune or death.

La Llorona - The Performance

With this image in mind, Diamanda Galás sings La Llorona, a traditional Mexican folk song that has been interpreted by numerous artists over the years. The narrow-minded and nostalgic listener will compare her rendition to other singers' approaches to the song and thus miss the point of the intrinsic value of Diamanda’s version. Tradition is almost always the most powerful factor in musical reality (as in any other reality, for that matter), and Diamanda shows this by adding new elements to well-known songs, as she always does, keeping tradition alive. Herein lies her genius too.

At the end of her performance, she dedicates the song to the victims of femicide. It is estimated that over 500 women were killed between 1993 and 2011 in Ciudad Juárez, a city in northern Mexico. This fact puts her rendition in a certain light. If the malevolent silence of neglect and oblivion is of political consequence, then she is political. Why? The “Don’t forgive” between the lines serves as a reminder of what has happened, can happen again. She has a clear-eyed understanding of power dynamics and the broader geopolitical landscape. We Are the World or, worse still, People Have the Power, sing the privileged. Fat chance. Alas, the biggest words come from the safest places. Our sincere apologies for the inconvenience, but our special needs disco facility is now closed for the season. Diamanda, on the other hand, suggests that every man is an island, or as Henry James would put it, “People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second housemaid.” Let us leave it at that. On the very same note, Diamanda Galás is not here to sell empathy to you. My guess is that her reward is to have you think about what matters to her, and by being a first-rate musician, composer, singer, pianist, and performing artist, she shares her vision with us. Anyone who has been to her performances can testify to the tremendous emotional and physical impact of her stage presence and the intensity of her performance. She takes no prisoners in that regard, but this is only the beginning, the Alpha of matters that matter, the shell-shock initiation of the process of education. To know and understand more is accordingly the Omega. This is at least my impression, and I have seen her perform live seven times.

The opening chords in a minor key, before she plays the melody so hauntingly exquisite, are like those of a jaguar treading on the boneyards, poppies in bloom scattered like flowers of carnage everywhere, where the killed women lay in their graves. They don't rest, but they lay there. Is it La Llorona looking for her lost girls? Who knows. Articulation is what makes form discernible, and how marvelously isn’t the melody articulated. She doesn’t only sing legato, but she plays it as well, overlapping the end of one note with the start of the next, creating a seamless transition.

Now pay attention to the details, technically speaking, and how she takes off on the repetition of Llorona¹ into Canto Jondo ornamentation with an intentionally restricted tessitura and characteristic vocal timbre. Ay, those melismas are a sheer delight. Furthermore, when she hits a high note on the repetition of sabroso² and sustains it radiantly, with a focused and concentrated tone, she becomes a figure in the picture she paints, and is made herself a part of it. Thus, technique is in the service of the narration and constitutes a story in itself. In Thomas Mann’s words, it is the spirit of the narrative that speaks, not the character who sings. The pure sound of the soprano line she tosses off is spellbinding—not elegiac nor plaintive but firm and defiant in nature. Another compelling detail is how her voice changes, scales down in volume, and becomes a bit hushed, intensely hushed, when she sings about how the wind³ sounds like cries as if to emulate La Llorona's presence…

Surely, there are many ways to understand this particular version of the song. I don't claim to know exactly what La Llorona is about, but if I may suggest an approach: Diamanda’s performance transported me to places I seldom visit and made me aware of the marrow of the song.

The narrator addresses La Llorona directly, but she does not sing herself. Throughout the song, La Llorona remains a silent, haunting presence. The narrative is entirely from the perspective of the person addressing her, and this aligns with traditional depictions of La Llorona, where she is more of a spectral figure that evokes responses and emotions in those who encounter her, rather than being an active participant in the dialogue. In my understanding of the lyrics, the narrator mirrors La Llorona, reflecting her themes of longing, sorrow, and disequilibrium. In essence, the narrator can be seen as an echo of La Llorona, experiencing and expressing a similar depth of emotion and longing for closure. This mirroring adds layers to the song, connecting personal experiences of grief and loss with the broader, mythic narrative of La Llorona.

In its entirety, Diamanda Galás’s approach and interpretation of La Llorona is a powerhouse of multiple energies where form and content converge.

This live recording of La Llorona is from her latest album Diamanda Galás in Concert.