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The Radio Art Hour: Diamanda Galas, Melody Sumner Carnahan, Laetitia Sonami, Marie Goyette (Audio)
Oct 02, 2021
Produced by Wave Farm Radio Artist Fellows and Artistic Director Tom Roe.
Two works this week from the New American Radio archives. Melody Sumner Carnahan with Laetitia Sonami and Marie Goyette contribute "Manananggal" and Diamanda Galas adds "Schrei 27." Carnahan's story is about two powerful women who come under each other's influence, thereby releasing unconscious contents. Each begins to see the other as evil, bringing to life a type of vampire "a woman who can cut her body in half"the once-metaphorical beast known in Philippine folklore as "the manananggal." During the unraveling of their history, the two women again draw close, the leitmotif of each is firmly underscored as she projects onto the other woman emotions and elemental forces she has repressed in herself. Originally commissioned for stage by STEIM in Amsterdam. Commissioned by New American Radio. Then, Diamanda Galas and her "Schrei 27." It consists of several short performances over the space of twenty-seven minutes alternating extreme high-energy vocal work with absolute silence. The performances are chapters of a confession which might have been induced through a chemical or mechanical manipulation of the brain. There is a high density of speech-sound over time which is often machine-like in its velocity. The work employs the atypical speech and vocal signal processing that Gals has been researching since 1979. A co-commission of the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and New American Radio.