When Eartha Kitt sang of the bravery of Waray women to the world
Photos from The Pritzker Family National Photography Collection and GNP Crescendo Records
American singer and actress Eartha Kitt is best known for her earnest song “Santa Baby,” released in 1953 and which has since been covered by other artists of import like Madonna and Gwen Stefani. A little-known fact is that Kitt herself is fond of adapting songs in her distinctive musical style. But not just any song.
Another hit she is known for is “C’est Si Bon,” an endearing 1947 French song, that proved Kitt’s mastery of languages. She is known to have recorded music in at least 10 languages. One of which is a Philippine language used by an ethnic group in Eastern Visayas.
In the early 1960s, Kitt sang a version of the song “Waray-Waray,” originally sung by the “Queen of Kundiman” Sylvia La Torre.
The 1953 song composed by Juan Lorenzo Silos Jr. with lyrics by National Artist of the Philippines for Music and Literature Levi Celerio tells of the story of the bravery of Waray women, and how they were tougher than the rest.
In a recording, Kitt prefaced her live performance with the words, “The suppose you wonder what language this is. It’s the language of the Philippine islands called Togalog (sic) and it says, the women of Waray-Waray had ‘muscles like steel’ and ‘we can fight any battle but our kisses are as sweet as wine.’” She then began singing as if she knew the language by heart.
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“Waray-Waray” has since been included in her repertoire of international song covers. She even sang it live at the Araneta Coliseum in 1963 when she visited Manila. The singer also told of an anecdote about performing it for the late dictator’s wife, former First Lady Imelda Marcos, where Marcos’ male entourage sang along albeit out of tune.
The three-minute-and-thirty-second cover tagged as a Philippines islands song appears in her 1965 album “Eartha Kitt Live at the Plaza.”
Kitt reportedly took a liking to the song because of its feminist theme. The rendition, Asian American Studies professor Lucy M. Burns wrote in 2016, acts “as a foil to Kitt’s artistic persona as one who embraced and explored female power and sexuality. It is unknown when Kitt first encountered this song and when she first sang it.”
Burns also made the connection between the popularity and appeal of Kitt’s “Waray-Waray” among Filipinos and the nation’s American imperialist ties. “Kitt’s rendition of ‘Waray-Waray’ in the early 1960s,” Burn wrote, “signifies a period of transition between US-Philippine imperial relations.”
She argued that Kitt positioned Waray women in her “black feminist performance imaginary,” at a time when the regional differences were being negotiated to fashion a unified image of a newly independent nation from American control.
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Nonetheless, every Filipino who’s heard Kitt’s “Waray-Waray” agrees that more than just spotlight the women of Eastern Visayas, she, too, gave justice to the song by performing it as close as vocally possible to the original, without mocking the language of said fierce women.
