slightly off-topic: eri chiemi

[Birgit Kellner]

This has in fact got nothing to do with Japanese cinema, but since
issues of entertainment culture continue to pop up on KineJapan, here's
a music-related question. I'd be glad to also get information on what
internet forums might be more appropriate for such questions.

I am looking for biographical and discographical information about the
singer Eri Chiemi, a singer not only of Jazz and other standards (enka),
but also of what I would describe as, in musical terms, jazzified
versions of tunes from other cultures, sung, in a manner of speaking, in
a "pastiche" style: The lyrics to these tunes are partly in Japanese,
partly in Portuguese, English or for instance Turkish; sometimes, they
merely translate non-Japanese original lyrics; at other times, they also
explain them within the tune itself (to an assumed Japanese audience),
comment upon them, and so on. One of my favourite tunes of hers is a
quite dazzling Turkish-style (in musical terms) tune whose lyrics tell,
partly in Japanese, partly in Turkish (or so it sounds), a Turkish
legend, interspersed with spoken Japanese narration explaining the
context of the legend to the listener, while directly addressing the
audience in a manner that I would actually expect from public lectures
on travels to exotic destinations ("minasan, torukugo gozonji
deshou"...).

In a nutshell, these tunes could serve as an interesting case-study in
terms of how non-Japanese musical styles and lyrics are self-consciously
presented as such to an assumed Japanese audience *within* the same
medium (music), and the singer herself would be interesting to look at
in terms of the variety of tunes that she released - just wondering
whether there are more singers or groups of the same kind, by other
singers, and whether contemporary entertainment studies have taken note
of them.

Birgit Kellner