Plague Mass and the blood-soaked performance as St John the Divine: How Diamanda Galás illuminated the AIDS epidemic
Art has always been used as a vehicle for social protest, political activism, and awareness. Music and politics have shared a complicated relationship, particularly in the modern era following the hippie movement and its blending of art with activism. Still, it is a history which stretches back hundreds of years. In the modern era, however, musical activism is incredibly widespread, and protest messages can regularly be heard, even in the mainstream pop charts. Few artists, however, would dare to construct such a severe protest as the avant-garde icon Diamanda Galás.
Hailing from San Diego, Galás began to establish herself within the American avant-garde music scene during the late 1970s and early 1980s, gaining a reputation for her inventive and defiantly political work. Some of her early work, for instance, helped to raise awareness of political prisoners in Greece who were executed under the rule of the military junta, which controlled the nation between 1967 and 1974. Religion was also a major theme within the composer’s work during this early period, and that has certainly remained the same throughout her career.
Despite what nostalgia-sellers might have you believe, the 1980s were not a particularly enjoyable period for most ordinary people. Not only were the early days of neoliberalism making the lives of working-class people in America and the UK incredibly difficult, but the Cold War still raged on, with the threat of a nuclear holocaust becoming more realistic day by day. On top of all of that, the HIV and AIDS virus was discovered during the early part of the decade and went on to claim the lives of over 100,000 individuals.
Rather than banding together to fight this horrendous virus, many governments and powerful people ignored HIV or, worse, blamed the disease on homosexuals and heroin users. Thus, misinformation about the disease spread like wildfire and severely delayed research and treatment of the disease, as well as ruining the lives of many people suffering from the virus. Galás became aware of this injustice and began to campaign for awareness of AIDS during the early 1980s, shortly after her brother, Philip-Dimitri Galás, contracted AIDS.
The musician began to compose a trilogy of works surrounding the AIDS virus, with a particular emphasis on the treatment of patients by Christian leaders and activists, who regularly campaigned against safe sex, and shamed those who contracted HIV and AIDS. This trilogy became known as The Masque of the Red Death and focused on, in Galás’ words, “the process of slow death in a hostile environment” while denouncing “those who’ve twisted Christ’s teaching into socially sanctioned condemnation of sexual difference.”
Galás’ work was already incredibly controversial for its use of Christian scriptures to attack religious leaders’ treatment of AIDS, but she became even more divisive through her live performances. One such infamous performance became known as Plague Mass. Recorded at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York back in 1990, the performance saw the composer standing at the altar of the church, half-naked, covering herself in blood.
Expectedly, this performance infuriated many Christian activists and leaders in the United States, who accused the composer of blasphemy for her music and performance. However, Galás was successful in raising awareness of the AIDS epidemic and how the harsh treatment of patients by Christian groups only served to inflame the problem even further.
Plague Mass was subsequently released as an album in 1991 by the iconic independent label Mute, further fostering its infamous reputation. It might have caused Galás to be the centre of a targeted campaign of harassment by certain Christian organisations, but Plague Mass is among the most defiant and vitally important performances in the modern history of music.
