Best the year - Music - Diamanda Galas - Laurie Anderson - Brief Article

New Internationalist, Jan-Feb, 2002

A few days after 11 September, Diamanda Galas played London's Royal Festival Hall. A New York-based performer whose work has often addressed the AIDS holocaust, she didn't say anything. She simply added 'Dark End of the Street' to her set. No other words were necessary. Galas didn't have an album out in 2001, although Laurie Anderson did.

Ignore her 2001 studio album: if you haven't heard her earlier work, then the two-CD compilation Talk Normal (Warner Archives/Rhino, reviewed in NI 334) is essential listening. 'O Superman' has never been more necessary. Groupov's extraordinary Rwanda 94 (Carbon 7, NI 336) was bleak, but astonishing: Belgian-based musicians gathering to mark the Rwandan genocides, It was art torn from a terrible darkness, and all the more potent for it. On a happier note, Sheila Chandra goes from strength to strength: This Sentence is True (The Previous Sentence is False) (Shakti, NI 338) is experimental music with a popular edge and the capacity to leave the listener breathless. But Salt Ra in, a collection of karnatic-inflected blues songs from Susheela Raman (Narada World, NI 340) gets the vote for 2001'S best album. Using India's ancient ragas in such a way may seem a tall order, but Raman's vocal delicacy and flights of improvisation make this an album to return to time and again.