“Queendoms”, an Album about Ancient Goddesses
Interview with Giada Colagrande
“Medea” is a 1969 film by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The role of Medea is interpreted by Maria Callas. She personifies the circle while Jason personifies the line. Jason brings into the world the vitality of linear motion, of progression, a sense of personal power. His intellect is already a tool for doing business, dominated by the predatory instinct to explore and to conquer. Medea’s culture, on the other hand, is magic, rich in colour and beauty, a culture that despite its sacrificial core does not know any sense of guilt. There man is not the centre, he must conform to one. In the film she embodies prehistory and sacredness. The two dimensions are not reconcilable. After Jason’s betrayal, Medea turns back to the magic circle of her natural civilisation untouched by calculations and self-interest to accomplish her revenge against him, by killing both their children and inflicting on him the pain of remorse. Jason represents the patriarchal figure dominated by linearity and its concomitant values of acquisition and possession. Through Medea’s rebellion Pasolini seems to be stressing that myth is still here amongst us, in our unconscious. Medea is a high priestess who brings us back to the mythical days of the female goddesses when all manifestations, no matter how far-fetched, were considered holy. It was woman who had the gift of creation. Man could only wonder, adore or be envious. In Pasolini’s vision, the ancient priestess Medea keeps whispering her message to modern society, tormenting us with frightening dreams. But Jason, the man, must harden his heart for the business and the illusion of making more history.
Why Medea? Why am I mentioning her story? Because I was constantly reminded of her tragic destiny while listening to “Queendoms,” film director and music composer Giada Colagrande’s debut album due to be released on 1st February, a fascinating research into the role played by female goddesses throughout human history and how their mythology has been censored and neglected during the centuries. In “Queendoms” Giada Colagrande has used the pseudonym of AGADEZ and taken it upon herself to give voice to a long-forgotten saga whose teachings — she believes — must not be ignored.
First thing first, Giada. I can’t help asking you: how was it singing with Angélique Kidjo? You know, I had pleasure of interviewing her a few years ago and then I went to see her gig at the Auditorium here in Rome. She performed with her band an entire album by The Talking Heads, “Remain in Light”, and she was just amazing.
I agree. Angélique is amazing. Angélique came on board thanks to the idea of a common friend, a very dear friend of mine who is also a dear friend of hers. I’m talking about Annie Ohayon, a name that particularly in the States but also in other places in the world is associated with great music because she’s worked many years with Angelique as well as with Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson and others. Annie introduced me to Angélique many years ago and now Angélique and I are friends as well. I of course adore her, I admire her a great deal. Annie has always been following my work in music, giving me amazing support and advice. She already knew the whole concept of my upcoming album which would be all about ancient mother goddesses, and then she heard “Tanit”, the first song of the album and the only song on an African goddess. She heard the song and she said “I think Angélique would be amazing for the invocation of the Tanit part”. And I said “this idea is pure genius, it would be a dream come true but I wouldn’t dare approach Angélique to sing along in the riff of a song of mine.”
Of course, she’s such a big shot, a big cheese. The Guardian has listed Angélique Kidjo as one of the top 100 most inspiring women in the world and Forbes Magazine has included her among the 40 most powerful African celebrities.
Thank God! Anyway Annie said “listen, if I ask Angélique she’s going to be perfectly fine about telling me whether she likes the song or not, whether she wants to do it or not, so don’t worry because if she likes something she couldn’t care less about how pop or commercial it is, or whatever else.” So we sent the song and, thank God, Angélique liked it and I was of course very honoured and thrilled that she responded so well to the song and decided to participate. And that’s the result. The other featured singer in “Tanit”, Loire Cotler, is also an amazing singer. She is the voice of “Dune”, in the soundtrack of Dune, did you see the film?
Do you mean the first episode of the new series, the one with Timothée Chalamet as the lead character?
Yes, there’s a second one coming out soon.
I saw the first one with my daughter because she’s in love with Timothée Chalamet, she forced me to watch it. And I will have to go and see the second one of course because it I don’t join her she’s not going to be very happy about it.
That’s great because I loved the first one and am looking forward to the second one, I don’t know about you.
No, I loved it, don’t get me wrong. I did read all the books and also liked the David Lynch version before.
Me too. I loved also the David Lynch version. He’s my favourite director. Loire tours with Hans Zimmer who is the author of the “Dune” soundtrack. Loire’s the voice in it, and she’s amazing because she’s a force of nature. I’ve watched a bunch of videos of their concerts and she’s such a stage animal, on stage she’s just incredible. When I saw that I thought “well, here’s another feminine force that’s totally in the spirit of Tanit, as much as Angélique, although in very different ways.” Angélique is a black African kind of force while Loire is a blonde American Jewish woman. If you look at them they look like the opposite, and I’m kinda in the middle, a dark-haired Abruzzese white Italian. They had that in common, they had that thing in their voices. I thought it would be a perfect combination for that song, and I felt like I had received the greatest gift from both of them.
It certainly was. It’s funny you said you’re a big David Lynch fan because when I was listening to “Aphrodite”, your second song, I thought it was somehow twinpeakish.
Absolutely! Can I tell you something about this?
Sure!
“Aphrodite” was clearly inspired by Angelo Badalamenti who composed the fabulous “Twin Peaks” soundtrack. I had worked with Angelo Badalamenti in the past, he composed the soundtrack of a movie of mine and I adored him, adored working with him and stayed in touch with him. When I wrote “Aphrodite” I thought “I’m gonna send it to Angelo as I’m so curious to see what he thinks.”
He passed, didn’t he?
He passed away after just after that. I sent “Aphrodite” to him and a week later I realised he had passed away.
So he managed to hear it, I guess.
The song is totally dedicated to him.
I would like to ask you a question about the video you made for “Aphrodite”. Everything seems to be blurred, unfocused in the video. And I guess you did it on purpose. I had to watch it on a large screen. I usually don’t bother, but this time I couldn’t distinguish all the features.
That’s nice that it pushed you to watch it on a big screen, I like that.
Yeah, I’m usually a lazy bugger but this time I had to do it.
I made a choice beforehand concerning the entire project that any video material I want to shoot I’m going to shoot it with my phone. As a matter of fact, the video of “Aphrodite” is entirely shot with my phone. This is not an aesthetic choice as it is a choice of intimacy. I wanted to be as far as possible from anything that requires a production. I did shoot music videos before. Of course they’re not movies but they do nonetheless require a production, no matter how small your crew might be or how limited your equipment might be. And I absolutely didn’t want that dimension but I wanted a dimension that’s so intimate that it feels like you’re writing your own personal journal but instead of writing a paper journal you are narrating or telling that narration with video and the music, which is the spirit of the entire album. I made the album in my studio, completely by myself with the help of my friends. But there was no producer, no label, no money, no nothing. I had to learn how to use Pro Tools, for example. It took me six months, the software that’s now most commonly used for the editing process. I had thought the most difficult part would be the one dealing with composition because it was the first time that I wrote the music. I had studied composition for three years but that was nothing compared to how difficult the technical part of editing and the whole software part can get. I realised there’s a reason why sound engineers get paid so much money, because it’s a very difficult job. I wanted the video of “Aphrodite” to look very dreamlike, because I thought of it and envisioned it as a kind of a journey into a dreamworld. The elements in it are Aphrodite, the goddess that was born from the sea, the foam of the sea and of the waves. And I did shoot the sea. I envisioned it as an inner journey, a journey inside ourselves. I filmed an eye, and then the sunrise first and then the sunset and everything that you see after that. They are all images that evoke Aphrodite and what she represents for me — basically the essence of love.
I was really intrigued by your research and your work. I don’t know if you can call it a concept album. It’s not something you come across every day. But I need some explanations and am going to drop some hints concerning your songs, hoping that maybe you will tell me what their meaning could be. The third song is called “Inanna” and you sing she’s the mother of the underworld. In your lyrics you say “your absence is revealed”, “in the shadow you can thrive”. May I ask you to explain your lyrics to me?
Inanna is the mother goddess of the Sumerians. All of these ten goddesses described in the ten songs of my album are amazing because they are very pervasive. They’re complex and very complete. They are originally all mother goddesses. To cut a long story short I can tell you that these mother goddesses are a selection of mine among those goddesses who were given a name 4,000 and 3,000 before Christ when the Sumerians invented writing. But they come from before that time. Now we know that this goddess was called Inanna by the Sumerians and another one was called Isis by the Egyptians, but I tried to trace their most ancient roots. First of all, the more you go back the less you find. They all have very mysterious origins as you can imagine because there are no documents. There are only references that come from after the time writing was invented. The first representations of some of these goddesses date as back as 7,000 or 8,000 before Christ. Inanna was an amazing figure but one of the most interesting things about her for me is her extraordinary mythology that precedes Gilgamesh. The Sumerian saga of Gilgamesh derives originally from the saga of Inanna. Gilgamesh was a minor character in the story of Inanna. The story of Inanna is far more ancient. The most interesting part for me is the one called “Inanna’s descent into the underworld.” What happened is that Inanna was the goddess of the world above but she had a sister, Ereshkigal, who was the goddess of the underworld, basically her dark counterpart. As the story goes, one day Inanna decides to visit the underworld to pay homage to her sister Ereshkigal because Ereshkigal has just had a big loss, her partner — a god clearly — has died. So Inanna decides to go down to the underworld but she’s aware that it’s dangerous and tells her priestess to give her three days. If within three days Inanna has not come back up her priestess is supposed to start playing the drum. The story mentions playing the drum like shamans still do nowadays in order to travel when they do their rituals or shamanic journeys. To go to other dimensions and come back they use the drum as a way of calling someone back to where they belong. So Inanna says to her priestess “play the drum and ask for help from the other gods to get me back up in order to rescue me, but give me three days.” Does it sound familiar? Three days is the story of the Christian Easter. Jesus Christ dies for three days. It all comes from Inanna. If you read the story of Inanna you will surprisingly find every single detail of every narration that comes from every main religion. Inanna’s partner was born on December 25th, does it ring a bell? Everything, from numbers to details, is just incredible, it all comes from there. Anyway Inanna goes down and there she goes through seven levels. At each level of her descent they take something away from her. Eventually they strip her naked by taking away all her clothes.
It sounds like “Twin Peaks” all over again, when the TV-series is dealing with a myth called “The Dweller on the Threshold,” a sort of local legend about a place called the White Lodge. It goes back into ancient Indian lore. Native Americans believe that the White Lodge is where spirits that move man and nature reside. Its opposite, known as the Black Lodge, represents a challenge wandering spirits must face on their way down to perfection. There they meet their shadow-shelf, called the Dweller on the Threshold. If they confront the Black Lodge with imperfect courage, it utterly annihilates their soul.
Absolutely, you’re right. And eventually Inanna gets down there in front of her sister Ereshkigal, naked and without her powers. Inanna is now like any other normal mortal person because they’ve taken everything away from her. And Ereshkigal tells her that now that she has reached the world of the dead if she wants to get back above she will need to die first because everyone must die before being reborn. When after three days Inanna does not come back up her priestess, following instructions, starts playing the drum and the gods come to help Inanna and they rescue her and let her back up. And all I did in my song was imagining a dialogue between Inanna and Ereshkigal once Inanna reaches her sister in the underworld. If you noticed, I sing with two different voices. The first verse has a sweet voice and that’s Inanna. And the second voice is Ereshkigal answering Inanna. The lyrics you heard are the dialogue I had imagined, and I imagined it that way basically inspired by what a lot of other people have written about this story which is called “Inanna’s descent”. Even Jung got obsessed with it. He thought it perfectly represented the journey of any woman when she has her period, when she goes down to her darkest places and she has to face her dark side to then go back up integrating this dark side, but not rejecting it. For a woman it’s like integrating her male part as a woman, and vice versa for a man.
I remember Jung arguing that every man has an “anima” and every woman has an “animus”.
Exactly. Inanna and Ereshkigal are basically the symbols of the bright and the dark side of any woman and of any person. I really wanted to legitimize the dark side when referring to Ereshkigal’s reply to Inanna “you are born in me”. Which is true, life is born in darkness. If you don’t integrate darkness you’re not complete.
My favourite song in your album is “Lilith”. You very explicitly say about Lilith “you’re the first woman.” I take it then that she comes before Eve. In your song Lilith gets punished and exiled. You then sing “we are you / we all come from you”. You also mention a “black womb”, an “untameable force” and “a curse for being wild”. Can you tell me something about “Lilith”, my favourite song?
Thank you. I sometimes joke saying that “Lilith” is the protest song of the album.
You mean your fingerpointing song?
Exactly. That’s what the song “Lilith” is doing in this album, it’s pointing its finger against something. Because Lilith is the most mistreated, misunderstood goddess of them all. She’s a very ancient goddess of the neolithic era. And — let me tell you — she was glorious. She was everything, the goddess of death and life and love. But she was also very strong and an untameable force, that’s why I sing that. What happened is that patriarchy toppled the existing system and the monotheistic religions were born as a consequence of that because they are of course patriarchal religions. Lilith was the protagonist in the first chapter in the first version of Genesis they had first written. They wrote that God had created a man and a woman, Adam and Lilith, and on the seventh day they made love, and Adam was on top of her. Lilith after a while asked to reverse positions and she said “can I now be on top of you?”. And Adam said “why should you?”. And she said “because we’re equal.” Adam then goes to God and complains about her bid for power or something like that and God punishes her. God curses her. Lilith is exiled into the underworld and she becomes the goddess of the underworld. She becomes a demon, is cursed by God and can’t give birth and can’t give life anymore but can only give birth to dead creatures, which symbolically is like the worst curse you can put on a woman if she can no longer deliver life but only death. A lot has been written on this reversal of literature, on how evil Lilith was supposed to be, how she’s supposed to represent the dark side of everybody. Think about this: in astrology there is a point that can be calculated in the sky but it’s not a planet, it’s known as “black moon” and it’s also known as “Lilith”. And do you know what the black moon represents? It’s the dark side of everybody, men and women, so it’s like saying that the dark side of a man is a woman. Ha ha.
And the other way round?
No, no. The black moon is only one, a woman, and it’s Lilith. She was the most mistreated goddess. She was completely transformed into something that was very different from what she was originally — a glorious birth goddess of the neolithic era. But she was so powerful that she probably became the scariest goddess for patriarchal religions to accept and integrate. And so she was banned and described as a monster. This is why I think that we as women should reclaim our Lilith that’s inside us, being proud of our dark side because dark doesn’t mean negative, it only means secret, which is a beautiful thing.
I didn’t know about this Kamasutra element in the Holy Scriptures.
Yeah, go online and google “Lilith and Adam”. And think about this: they rewrote the beginning of Genesis and they took away Lilith, and then they wrote that God created man, Adam, and from his rib God created woman, Eve. And then Lilith became a very minor character in the book of Genesis and also in the entire Bible. She gets mentioned probably only three times. Something very negative, nothing compared to what she really used to be.
While listening to your album I kept thinking about the Greek tragedy of Medea and the film by Pier Paolo Pasolini about Medea. I don’t know why.
That’s so nice! I really like that association.
I mean, Medea is such a cruel woman. What she does is staggering, killing her own sons in order to avenge herself against Jason, her husband.
And it’s funny that you mention it after talking about Lilith, because Medea is the result and the product of exactly the same dynamic and the same patriarchal mentality of demonizing strong female figures that originally would have had nothing evil or negative in their essence. But they turned them into demons or something to be afraid of or to judge.
I was also thinking about a song by Leonard Cohen called “There’s a War” and the refrain goes “there’s a war between a man and a woman”, obviously suggesting there is an ongoing war between men and women. You know, you talk about ancient goddesses and Leonard Cohen spent long years in the Greek island of Hydra, a place not far-away from where they used to celebrate the Eleusinian mysteries in Ancient Greece.
Absolutely. And also Crete is probably the most important place for ancient matriarchal societies because it was the last one to surrender, to give in to patriarchy around 1500 before Christ. It was the very last matriarchal stronghold. And Aphrodite comes from Cyprus. Yes, we’re talking about an area that’s definitely crucial.
