Karaoke Karisma Blog With KJ Toqer

How karaoke came into its own in the last few years. Or, American Karaoke.

Karaoke since it's inception has always been popular in Japan and other Asian countries.  Considering karaoke started off as nothing more than cassette tapes being played while a singer stood there with a lyric sheet singing, one can imagine it has been around much longer than the CDG/DVD/MP3 systems in use today.  While some debate it's actual age, we can probably safely assume it's been around since the 50's, so almost 60 years.

Wait, 60 years?  That pre-dates the cassette tape in Kobe theory by almost 20 years!!  So where does Toqer have proof that karaoke was actually invented here in America instead of Japan? The Mickey Mouse Show.

The Mickey Mouse Show had a portion of the show, either the beginning credits or the ending credits where the theme song would be sung, while a subtitle with a bouncing ball would be displayed on the screen so television viewers could sing along.  Yes folks, despite contrary reports karaoke was invented in Japan, prior art existed in the USA first.

I'm not saying the Japanese don't deserve some credit.  The Japanese were the first to actually think of creating a market from this.  An entire supply chain of Karaoke producers, equipment manufacturers and venues were created from their efforts, so we can certainly be grateful for that.

Now that we have established that karaoke was popular in the 50's in America, what happened?  I think somewhere in the grand scheme of creating television, the idea that people would tune in to sing to backing music and a bouncing ball was lost. If only they'd known the potential.

It would take almost 20 years for the idea of karaoke to start gaining momentum in the USA again.  It began with Japanese venue's like the 7 Bamboo.

In Japan you typically go to a karaoke house.  The house is comprised of several private karaoke rooms, about 12' by 12'.  Inside the room is a table, pillows on the floor (remember, in Japan they sit at low tables, on pillows) and a karaoke machine.  You are assigned a hostess who runs the machine and fulfills drink orders.  Because rooms are private, you end up with very intimate parties.

In the late 70's when 7 Bamboo ran on cassette tapes the crowds weren't huge, never getting over 30 people. The customers were primarily Japanese, the songs sung were primarily Japanese.

Things continued this way into the late 80's and early 90's.  Problem with having a mostly Japanese venue though is from a marketing perspective, you're narrowing yourself to a very thin customer base.  Thus the interest in American songs began.  Also during the 80's -90's American business started taking an interest in Japan for their technology and manufacturing capabilities.  So even karaoke rooms in Japan had interest in English songs to attract American business people on travel to their venues.

The late 80's and 90's also saw Americans starting to take an interest in Japanese pop culture.  Anime like Robotech, and toys like Transformers made the young kids really want to learn more about the Japanese.  Then the Japanese video game explosion from Nintendo hit us in 1985.  This introduced young Americans to even more Japanese culture and artwork than even Anime.

So in the early 80's the stage was set for karaoke to start making it's rise in popularity in America.  It first came in the form of Laserdiscs from companies like Pioneer.  Other Japanese companies like Victor, DKK and others soon join the ranks of Japanese companies producing English karaoke.

Later on the CDG format was developed.  CDG was more of a hack on the CD redbook specification.  On every CD there is a non audio track that tells the player the position of the laser on the CD.  Somebody figured out a way of not needing that track (to produce cheaper CD players) then someone else had the bright idea "Well, since that track isn't used anymore, let's shove data in there" and CDG was born.

The first CDG player that washed up on American shores in great quantities came from the Hudson Company of Japan.  Hudson produced at the time, what was the most popular game system in Japan, the PC-Engine.  It was later relabeled as the "TurboGrafx-16" in America.

What set the "TurboGrafx-16" apart from the Nintendo and Sega Genesis was it had a CD add on for playing CD based games.  At $400 many gamers considered it too expensive at the time.  Remember, this was late 80's, early 90's.  CD's had barely been invented, and the fastest computer was an IBM XT with a 286 processor running at 12mhz.  Most music was still being distributed on cassette tape.

The one special feature the add on had though was the ability to decode CDG disks.  There wasn't many at the time.  There was a Talking heads disk, a Jimi Hendrix disk, and I think that's about it.

The TurboGrafX eventually died and ended up as nothing more than a footnote in video game history.  It does have a somewhat important page in American karaoke history because it was the first mass marketed CDG based system in the US. (I'd be kind of stoked to see a TurbografX running a karaoke show)

American business people who had gotten a taste of the karaoke drug while on travel were soon frequenting the Japanese venues here in the US looking for their fix.  At the same time, the venues Japanese customers were starting to age and profits were starting to dip.  So the new American customers were welcome additions to their traditionally Japanese venues.

DK Karaoke was the first Karaoke producer to realize this, and create what has been said to be the greatest karaoke collection ever. The DKG disks 1-99.

Through the 90's any karaoke venue worth anything had a DKK set.  The set had everything from oldies and standards to new hits at the time like Lenny Kravitz and Bel Biv Devoe.  The genius of the set was it crossed many different genres and time periods of music.  Slowly but surely a small but dedicated scene developed in America for karaoke.

Throughout the rest of the 90's karaoke was still considered by most Americans to be a "Japanese" thing done mostly by weirdo's hanging out in Asian bars.  While there were some mobile KJ's at the time, most Americans simply chose to not even look at karaoke as a serious form of entertainment.

This was a mistake on our parts.  American karaoke had evolved well past it's Japanese roots in part to our culture.  In Japan, karaoke is an intimate affair in a small room with your friends.  In America, karaoke had evolved to give folks an avenue to be a rock star, even if it was just for the few songs they sung each night.  Americans seem to love bigger and badder.  Americans soon discovered that it's hard to beat a room full of people we don't even know screaming and cheering for us.  Pop culture seems to push us to want to be more like Mick Jagger or David Lee Roth, not just sing their songs.

Karaoke would not see a resurgence in popularity until the creation of American Idol in 2002.  Now firmly embedded in the hearts and minds of Americans everywhere, after the success of several seasons of "Idols", anybody could be a star.  Finally, it was OK to perform songs in front of crowds. In recent years, Numark wasted no time in bringing out some of the coolest professional karaoke gear like the KMX01, KMX02 and CDN25+G to give KJs the tools to make the performance even better.

Now in 2007 we've come full circle.  What started out as a bouncing ball on the Mickey Mouse club has again become an acceptable form of entertainment in our culture, with tens of thousands of songs to choose from.  Not only has it come full circle, but with the advancement of technology, karaoke has become more accessible to people who are just car or shower singers.

When they get out past that stage of singing in the car or shower, thanks to the work of 1000's of dedicated KJ's, venues, producers, and equipment manufacturers like Numark, they can find a place to show off their shower tuned skills to an audience with ease.  Karaoke in America is more popular than ever. They can get up on stage with stars in their eyes and a song in their heart, and belt it out like their souls depend on it.

KARAOKE IS HARDCORE!!!
--Toqer