Karaoke is thought to have originated some 20 years ago at a little restaurant in Kobe City, Japan. The story goes that there was a very innovative owner who ran a small restaurant. One night the restaurants entertainment didn’t show up. The owner, however, was not going down easy. The owner kept the customers content by encouraging them to sing along with an instrumental tape, and so karaoke began its climb to popularity.

“Karaoke is a Japanese abbreviated compound word: “kara” comes from “karappo” meaning empty, and “oke” is the abbreviation of “okesutura,” or orchestra .” After its innocent invention, karaoke became very popular among all ages. In Japan, a party brightened and started ‘rockin’ when someone decided to sing, others participated as well by clapping and encouraging the singer.

Ability to keep a good tune was never an issue at these karaoke parties. It did not matter if one was a horrible singer, or carried the voice quality of Elvis Presley;

Tom came up to their table, shook their hands and proceeded to unload some boxes of CDs. Tyler grabbed for his paper of questions but before he can ask any questions, Tom starts speaking. “You know, the nice thing about Karaoke is that it’s the same all the time. Unlike live music, where they mix it up a lot, people have a better chance at following along with the music.” He said.

Speaking of dodging tomatoes, Anna Gasner was first introduced to karaoke during Missoula First Night. She doesn’t remember the exact place that was having the karaoke night but the experience stays with her. She was there with her good friends Amber and Heather and they decided to do the trio of “A Little Help from my Friends.” The only problem was that they played the Beatles version and she only knew the Joe Cocker version! They ended up turning off Amber and Heather’s microphones and left Anna belting out the wrong, off-key version. She’s been hooked ever since.

However, karaoke has been enjoyed by the masses even before Anna and her friends began doing it regularly. Since its birth, karaoke has been constantly evolving with the changing times and increasing amount of popularity. With the increase in modern technology aiding this, it is no surprise that karaoke is as wide spread and popular as it is today. At first, karaoke started out very humble, with little technology involved. The only major amount of electronics that were used was a microphone, speakers and a tape player. The singer either knew the song from memory or read the lyrics from a book or page (which was probably very awkward).

Little did Tyler or the rest of the group know; Anna was a karaoke super star! Tom let Tyler in on her little secret when he knew Anna byname and could even name some songs she sings when she does karaoke! When Anna told tom that she was going for the professional look, he said that he was worried she was turning republican on him. That told Tyler that Anna must be awesome at karaoke if he knew her name, songs she sings and even what she wears! And she thought she could slip one past Tyler. Think again Anna!

The home karaoke unit has also evolved with the times. Starting out much like karaoke, the original machines had tapes with lyric books. The machines have now advanced to include CDs with outputs to use a television as a teleprompter. The technology has even come so far as to implement MP3 format music that displays the lyrics for the song on an LCD screen on the unit. These songs can even be downloaded online, thus eliminating the CD and cassette restrictions of the older machines, letting patrons store more music in the machine than was before possible on just a single CD.

As karaoke increased in popularity, more and more people began to invest money into the business. W

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