Karaoke has been
entertaining people worldwide ever since its inception 20
years ago. It is a Japanese abbreviated compound word: “kara”
comes from “karrapo” meaning empty, and “oke”
is the abbreviation of “okesutura,” or
orchestra. Karaoke allow one to experience the limelight of
a professional singer. Holding a microphone and singing a
popular song to the accompaniment of an “orchestra”
in front of a bar full of patrons provides the perfect
environment. Karaoke is a typical form of amusement for
Japanese business people, as it was supposedly invented in
the city of Kobe in a night amusement quarter at the end of
a high economic growth period. Its exact origin is unclear;
however, the widely excepted story is that the use of
Karaoke started in a snack bar in Kobe City. It is said that
when a strolling guitar artist could not come in to perform
at the bar due to illness or other personal reasons, the
owner of the bar prepared tapes of accompaniment recordings,
and vocalists enjoyed singing to the tapes. Eventually
patrons of the bars who enjoyed singing wanted to
participate in the fun, thus evolved Karaoke. Even though
the aforementioned anecdote is only a legend, this may have
been the birth of Karaoke. Since then, Karaoke has been
commercialized and has become a trend all over Japan. In
Japan, after a stressful day at work, a businessman and his
colleagues may drop by a bar after work, have a drink, and
take part in singing the latest tunes to the accompaniment
of Karaoke music.
Through the advancement of technology, Karaoke has become a
worldwide pastime. Using technological innovations such as
the video disk, laser disk, and CD graphics, Karaoke has
grown to be a major entertainment industry, more
specifically in the nighttime entertainment realm in the US.
Eclectic groups of people travel from bar to bar perfecting
their Karaoke performances on a given evening. Entrepreneurs
realize that there is a growing competition in the nighttime
entertainment quarter of the economy and in order to keep
the market diversified and to maintain their own profits,
themes such as Karaoke nights are imperative to be a
forceful competitor. For example, in Westchester County, NY
very few bars offered Karaoke just ten years ago. Today
there are more than two dozen, and no two are alike. Most do
not advertise, but true Karaoke connoisseurs know the
hottest joints to patronize.
Karaoke attracts patrons to the bars on the typically slower
nights of the workweek. Whereas a Tuesday night at your
average bar may draw a crowd of less than a dozen people,
Karaoke nights in Poughkeepsie, NY at the Dutch Cabin
Restaurant and Bar attract a crowd of approximately 50-75
people. This is an especially impressive statistic when
compared to the 5-10 people that patronize the bar on a
regular weeknight. Thusly, profits are generated by the
Karaoke nights for the bar that exceed the gross that would
have been pulled had not more patrons been lured in on
weeknights. One important conclusions that was drawn by
performing interviews with the Karaoke patrons was that it
had not been for the Karaoke night they would not have gone
out to the bar that night, and in fact, they probably would
not have gone out at all. This has two very important
implications for what Karaoke means as a political economic
tool in Poughkeepsie.
The first implication of Karaoke nights is that it brings
people to specific destinations that would have been
abandoned had the Karaoke night not occurred. This is very
important for some of the local areas in Poughkeepsie. The
PikWik Pub, for instance, is a local bar that holds Karaoke
night every Thursday. The pub is located in Main Street in
an area that has been known to have street violence. By
increasing the number of nights each week that there is
activity on Main Street, the chances of street violence are
decreased. The area becomes an increasingly safe zone to be
in because of a phenomenon Jane Jacobs coined “eyes on
the street.”(Jacobs, 1969) If an area has mixed uses
and has people at all different times of the day using
facilities on the street, then it is known by the public
that the street will never be abandoned. This increased
presence on the street serves as a safety net for people who
might be thinking about living in the area or coming out at
night to go to a nightclub or bar. Thus. The Karaoke Night
theme when it is applied to bars in Poughkeepsie, serves to
make an area ripe for urban renewal. It is feasible that one
of the reasons that Poughkeepsie is experiencing a boom in
the housing market and a revival in interest in
redevelopment of the Main Street area is because of the
improved vitality and safety of the area due to
establishments creating Karaoke nights.
The other political economic implication that Karaoke Nights
have is related to the wealth they generate. Monday through
Thursday nights are not usually large profit nights for bars
and restaurants. Karaoke Night has produced as activity that
is seen as acceptable for a weeknight activity. Going to a
Karaoke Night is a different activity than just drinking.
For a certain group of people this has made the difference
and they are willing to come out to a Karaoke Night even if
they have work or school the following morning. This is an
important change for the owners of bars and restaurants.
Poughkeepsie bar owners have responded to this opportunity
to increase their profits in mass. On Tuesday nights the
Dutch Cabin offers a night of singing and getting down. They
draw most of their crowd from Merrist College and
Poughkeepsie residents. On Wednesdays, Las Falces gets ready
for a rambunctious drunken Vassar college consort to makes
its way to their door by revving up the box for its musical
stylings. Finally the PikWik Pub is known for its lack of
college students and its abundance of local representation,
who are as likely to wail out on the mike as any college
student. These owners have hit a jackpot. They have all
successfully added a night to each week when they can expect
to draw a crowd and gather the wealth.
These places do not change without reluctance from the bars
old timers. For each of these bars there are the people who
used to spend their nights in the bars before Karaoke nights
started. On these nights they no longer enjoy being in the
bar, or else the down right don’t feel accepted. This
is evidenced by the definite change in the look of the crowd
at any on these bars the night before the Karaoke Night
compared to the night of. Each bar experiences a drop in the
average age of the patrons and a disappearance of the bars “regular.”
Another conflict exists between the people who used to use
these streets at night for illegal activities. The increase
in use not only creates eyes on the streets that discourage
drug selling and other explicit uses, it also draws cops
into the area. When an area is heavily frequented at night,
cops are more likely to cruise the area to make sure that it
is safe. These changes create conflict between the people
who previously used the streets for the informal economy,
and the new and improved uses brought by the Karaoke
nights.
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