eri chiemi / eartha kitt

[Jonathan M. Hall]

I would be curious to hear whether they are truly Turkish lyrics.  Also, it
would be very interesting to compare the kind of domesticating
internationalism you locate in Eri Chiemi with what I suspect would be a
similarly mappable postwar American internationalist imperialism, found for
example in the songs and lyrics of Eartha Kitt.  Kitt was an easily
consumed 'medium' of the international other for many Americans, and Kitt
herself sang a "Turkish folk song'" peppered with false Turkish.  Whenever
I think of Eri, I think of her famous "Kamonna mai hausu, kammonna mai
hausu, Ai wanna gibu yuu kyandii."  Her deliberate emphasis on the last
word of the line, in the Japanese pronunication kyandii (candy) is part of
a trajectory, I think, that can be traced down to the Southern All Stars,
Matsuda Seiko, and others who played with English as they sang it.

Jonathan