The Chronicles of Karaoke

Karaoke is “kara” and “oke” in Japanese. Kara comes from “karappo” meaning empty, and oke comes from “okesutura” meaning orchestra. Commonly, a song when recorded has vocals and accompaniment, but music tapes with only the accompaniment recorded were named “karaoke.”

Today, this Japanese word is a Japanese word no more. Take a look at the most renowned of English dictionaries, The Oxford English Dictionary, and there you’ll see your favorite piece of entertainment listed. From the typical kind of entertainment for Japanese business people dropping to karaoke bars after work to have some drink and unwind while singing karaoke songs, now karaoke has been entertaining people all around the world since its invention twenty years ago.

According to karaoke history, the use of karaoke began at a snack bar in Kobe City. The story began when a strolling guitarist could not come to play at the bar because of illness, so the bar owner arranged accompaniment tape recordings, and the singers at the bar enjoyed singing to the tapes. This is only a legend though, but it might have been indeed the beginning of karaoke. Since then, karaoke has been commercialized and has become popular all over Japan.

Moving on to karaoke’s history, it was born in a night amusement quarter at the end of the high economic growth period in Japan. Before that, the clientele were accustomed to listening to famous songs via wire broadcasting, asking for their favorite songs by telephone, and the wire broadcasting company would put the songs on the air. The system like such continued for quite a while. Then again, it was not natural for many Japanese who like singing to only listen to other people sing. There karaoke entered the scene. Holding a microphone and singing a song to the accompaniment of an “orchestra,” they can feel like a professional singer. If the other customers as listeners applause for their performance, there’s the extra satisfaction they get. Karaoke has thus enthused people’s desire to sing. It also served as a pick-me-up tonic in removing stress to those business people and corporate men. As a result, karaoke immediately spread from Kansai (the region of its origin) to all over Japan… and to the rest of the world.