eri chiemi / eartha kitt

Tue May 16 17:13:59 EDT 2000

Thanks for all the information & clarifications so far. I have a few more thoughts
(largely questions) to add, and a few more informations about the Eri Chiemi tunes
that were discussed so far (at the end of this message).

Jonathan Hall wrote:

> As the use of the non-technical term /cultural imperialism/ implies,
> imperialism as an idea can be applied to many kinds of relations.  But more
> than this vague license to use the term in a cultural sense, I want to
> stress how vital it is to consider both colonialism and imperialism not
> simply as effects on non-metropolitan places (Nevis, India, Puerto Rico,
> Korea, all at various times) but as part and parcel of the "home front."

I am well aware of the kind of ideas you are referring to, specifically in the
context of colonial administration in India under British rule, where arguments
have been made that certain administrative forms were first "tested" in the
colonies and then also applied in the "homeland", or that, in a more cultural or
societal domain, the codification of women as an internal "other" accompanied by
the degrading of "effeminate" behaviour correlates with the identification of India
with a female principle, and the pervasive view of Indians as effeminate, weakened,
and so forth. I suppose that these are the kind of phenomena you mean.
At the same time, (1) I am rather suspicious of any attempts at emphasizing
exclusively cultural imperialism while at the same time playing its
politico-economical basis into the background, because I simply don't think it is
useful to analyze cultural phenomena as an end in themselves (my threshold for
tolerance of "culturalism" is admittedly quite low!), and (2) I would still insist
for the sake of analytical clarity that these phenomena are *effects* or *results*
of imperialism and not imperialism itself. But these are largely terminological and
conceptual issues. I don't mean to imply that you had actually articulated all
those things that I am suspicious of, but simply thought it useful to add these
remarks for clarification.

> I think it is useful to extend this idea of course to the
> notion of American cultural imperialism.  Especially in the High Period of
> postwar American imperialism, the international is expressed explicitly as
> something the bourgeois American consumer can purchase in his suburban
> comfort.  I... But like you, I also want to distinguish between
> modes of appropriation; hence I suggest looking at similarities between
> American international imperialism on the one hand and a domesticating
> internationalism in the Japanese case.  These were terms off the top of my
> head.  But, I think they do recognize one difference you point to in terms
> of the leins of power that surround the appropriation.

I am wondering whether it is useful to characterize this phenomenon, that is, the
use of what you term "the international" and what I think is more specifically the
"exotic" within popular culture, as an outcome of American cultural imperialism,
and whether there is indeed something peculiar about what you term American
"internationalism" - I find this simply a little bit too vague. How is the
appearance of exotic (Japanese, Turkish, Latin) elements in American popular music
in the 50s and 60s different from the popularity of Japanese prints in Europe in
the 19th century, leaving aside obvious variations in appearance and form and also
socio-political aspects which seem all too trivial (i.e. extension of access to
cultural commodities to larger sectors of the society)? That is, where are the
historical gaps and shifts from late 19th to mid-20th century? How is the
appearance of exotic elements and also exotic musicians in German popular music
during the 50s and 60s, which Roland has already mentioned, different from similar
phenomena in the US or Japan? Are there any specific socio-political conditions
that bring about brands of appropriation of the exotic that are distinctly
American, Japanese, German - in the sense that certain forms of appropriation could
only or more probably have arisen in the US, Japan or Germany, not of course in the
sense that a certain American "spirit", national or otherwise, would produce them?
I don't have any answers to these questions, but I think that these issues of
historical specificity as well as local specificity are perhaps more interesting
questions to start out with than the stipulation of an "American cultural
imperialism" or "internationalism".

> One thing I did want to suggest (at the same time as agreeing with a
> difference in power relations) was that the Eri Chiemi's relation with
> Portuguese or Turkish should at least be looked at in terms of how US
> internationalism was operating at the time.

Well, I have now (thanks largely to info from Roland Domenig and David Hopkins)
done a bit of - admittedly superficial - research on the net, regarding
specifically Eri Chiemi's two tunes "usukudara" (where the appropriation of Turkey
comes in) and "kamonna mai hausu" (the lyrics of which we discussed before; both
titles are here given in Japanese transliteration) -

1)
"Uskudara gider iken" (with the variations "uskudara" vs. "usku dara", "gideriken"
vs. "gider iken", and "usku-" vs.
"?sk?-"), also known unter the titles "katibim", "katip uskudara giderken", is an
old Turkish folk song, adapted by
Eartha Kitt as "uska dara", released in 1952.
[For those who are interested - two different traditional recordings of the song,
one dating from 1949, are
available online, linked in a paper entitled "audio essay on recent immigrants" by
Karl Signell from the site
"ethnomusicology online" (http://www.research.umbc.edu/efhm/3/signell/present.htm);
for comparison's sake, the
version performed by the group Anatolia is available at http://mp3.com). The
Turkish lyrics are available at
http://www.turkishmusic.org/discus/messages/5/35.htm.]
It is quite clear that Eri Chiemi's adaptation is a secondary adaptation of Eartha
Kitt's adaptation, for at least the
first part of Eartha Kitt's version that I've been able to listen to at amazon's
site already contains the spoken
narrative that explains the setting of the tale to the listeners, which I had
originally thought to be
characteristic for Eri Chiemi's rendering, or even of a "Japanese way" of
interspersing lyrics of foreign tunes with
explanations geared to Japanese audiences. The explanations might still be geared
to Japanese audiences, but the
style of giving such explanations in the first place seems to have been common or
at least occasionally used in the
US as well. So as far as my initial enthusiasm for what I thought to be something
specifically "Eri-an" or Japanese is concerned, I can throw that out the window; I
simply didn't know enough about the origins of the song. [This always happens to me
and I should be used to it by now - as a European who has never been to the US and
knows disappointingly little about most areas of US popular culture, I continue to
see Japanese idiosyncracies where there is merely adaptation of American ones - not
implying that Japanese adaptations cannot be idiosyncratic as well, but in a
different way than I commonly think they are.]

This particular example also raises the question whether there were *any* musical
appropriations of non-American exotic lands, such as Turkey or South America, in
Japanese popular music that were not secondary adaptations of appropriations
produced in the US.

2)
"come on-a my house" was first performed by Rosemary Clooney in 1951 (words and
music by William Saroyan and
Ross Bagdasarian, who later, as "David Seville", created The Chipmunks). The song
was also performed by Julie London (the beginning is available via a link at
http://www.ultralounge.com/Volumes/tikisampler.html). Interestingly enough, Julie
London did a Japanese-only TV-program with Bobby Troup and his band, during a phase
late 50s/early 60s, when she toured Brazil and Japan (info from
http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~agard/indexx.htm), apparently released on LD. Given that
Eri Chiemi's version of "come on-a my house" is much closer to London's than to
Clooney's - Clooney's being quite fast and swinging, London's slower, seedier, and
more suggestive -, also in terms of the emphasis of the lyrics, I am wondering
whether there's a possible connection here.

[N.B.: The two songs as performed by Eri Chiemi can apparently be downloaded from
http://tokyo.cool.ne.jp/polar_star/, but they're in vqf-format and at least my
vqf-plugin can't handle them.]

Apologies for the lengthy digression to those who aren't that interested in musical
things,

Birgit Kellner