Karaoke Around the World


Book Description

The contributors to this lively collection address the importance of karaoke within Japanese culture and its spread to other parts of the world, exploring the influence of karaoke in different societies.




Karaoke Around the World


Book Description

The karaoke machine is much more than an instrument which allows us to be a star for three minutes. The contributors to this lively collection address the importance of karaoke within Japanese culture and its spread to other parts of the world, exploring the influence of karaoke in such different societies as the United Kingdom, North America, Italy, Sweden, Korea and Brazil. They also consider the nature of the karaoke experience, which involves people as singers, co-singers and listeners.




Karaoke


Book Description

Presents an illustrated exploration of the world of Karaoke around the globe, from its role in prostitution in South East Asia to Karaoke taxis in Bangkok and nude Karaoke in Toronto. It addresses the complexity of this social craze, exploring its emergence in post-war Japan, its development, and its spread from South East Asia to the West.




Turn Around Bright Eyes


Book Description

Once upon a time I was falling apart. Now I'm always falling in love. Pick up the microphone. When Rob Sheffield moved to New York City in the summer of 2001, he was a young widower trying to start a new life in a new town. Behind, in the past, was his life as a happily married rock critic, with a wife he adored, and a massive collection of mix tapes that captured their life together. And then, in a flash, all he had left were the tapes. Beyoncé , Bowie, Bon Jovi, Benatar . . . One night, some friends dragged him to a karaoke bar in the West Village. A night out was a rare occasion for Rob back then. Turn around Somehow, that night in a karaoke bar turned into many nights, in many karaoke bars. Karaoke became a way out, a way to escape the past, a way to be someone else if only for the span of a three-minute song. Discovering the sublime ridiculousness of karaoke, despite the fact that he couldn't carry a tune, he began to find his voice. Turn around And then the unexpected happened. A voice on the radio got Rob's attention. The voice came attached to a woman who was unlike anyone he'd ever met before. A woman who could name every constellation in the sky, and every Depeche Mode B side. A woman who could belt out a mean Bonnie Tyler. Bright Eyes Turn Around Bright Eyes is an emotional journey of hilarity and heartbreak with a karaoke soundtrack. It's a story about finding the courage to move on, clearing your throat, and letting it rip. It's a story about navi- gating your way through adult romance. And it's a story about how songs get tangled up in our deepest emotions, evoking memories of the past while inspiring hope for the future.




in Search of A Voice


Book Description

Originating in Japan early in the 1970s as a simple sing-along technology, karaoke has become a hybrid media form designed to integrate mass-mediated popular music, video images, computer graphics, and the live musical performance of its human users. Not only has karaoke become a multimillion-dollar entertainment industry, its varied uses have also evolved into diverse popular cultural and social practices among many people around the world. Based on a two-year ethnographic study, this book offers a penetrating analysis of how karaoke is used in the expression, maintenance, and (re)construction of social identity as part of the Chinese American experience. It also explores the theoretical implications of interaction between the media audience and karaoke as both an electronic communication technology and a cultural practice. This book analyzes the social origins of karaoke and the dramaturgical characteristics of karaoke events, and explains how various musical genres are reframed as karaoke music. It also visits the numerous karaoke scenes in their natural context -- the sites of the actual consumption of media products, such as expensive private homes and fancy hotel ballrooms in the affluent suburbs of New Jersey, working-class restaurants and nightclubs in the multiethnic neighborhoods in Flushing, Queens, and Cantonese opera music clubs in New York's Chinatown. Finally, the book offers an intimate analysis of how karaoke has been adopted by several interpretive communities of first-generation Chinese immigrants not only as popular entertainment but also as a means to help (re)define their social identity and way of life.




Music around the World [3 volumes]


Book Description

With entries on topics ranging from non-Western instruments to distinctive rhythms of music from various countries, this one-stop resource on global music also promotes appreciation of other countries and cultural groups. A perfect resource for students and music enthusiasts alike, this expansive three-volume set provides readers with multidisciplinary perspectives on the music of countries and ethnic groups from around the globe. Students will find Music around the World: A Global Encyclopedia accessible and useful in their research, not only for music history and music appreciation classes but also for geography, social studies, language studies, and anthropology. Additionally, general readers will find the books appealing and an invaluable general reference on world music. The volumes cover all world regions, including the Americas, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and Asia and the Pacific, promoting a geographic understanding and appreciation of global music. Entries are arranged alphabetically. A preface explains the scope of the set as well as how to use the encyclopedia, followed by a brief history of traditional music and important current influences of music in each particular world region.




Karaoke Nights


Book Description

Karaoke. The word conjures all kinds of visions_possible stardom, abject performance terror, or just head-shaking bewilderment. Ten years ago when the Japanese craze had only recently arrived in the U.S., Rob Drew was drawn to the phenomenon as subject of research. What he discovered will fascinate and surprise you, whether you're a student of popular culture or just curious what's going to happen next Saturday when you get up to sing your first song at the corner bar. Karaoke Nights is both a keen observation on the external behavior of deejays, performers, and audience and an intimate portrait of the emotional roller coaster that is the internal life of a karaoke singer. Drew lets you feel just what itOs like to be the performer_agonizing over the song, feeling the nervous anticipation, analyzing your performance. At the same time he provides a probing analysis of the varied roles karaoke plays in popular culture and how it can guide an understanding of Olocal musicO and the relationship of ordinary people to stardom.







Can Tocqueville Karaoke?


Book Description

This volume questions the importance of arts and culture and their possible impact on politics and the economy. Chapters outline a new framework for analysis of democratic participation and economic growth and explore how these new patterns work around the world. The ideas of Alexis de Tocqueville and Joseph Schumpeter and Jane Jacobs are analysed.




Pure Invention


Book Description

The untold story of how Japan became a cultural superpower through the fantastic inventions that captured—and transformed—the world’s imagination. “A masterful book driven by deep research, new insights, and powerful storytelling.”—W. David Marx, author of Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style Japan is the forge of the world’s fantasies: karaoke and the Walkman, manga and anime, Pac-Man and Pokémon, online imageboards and emojis. But as Japan media veteran Matt Alt proves in this brilliant investigation, these novelties did more than entertain. They paved the way for our perplexing modern lives. In the 1970s and ’80s, Japan seemed to exist in some near future, gliding on the superior technology of Sony and Toyota. Then a catastrophic 1990 stock-market crash ushered in the “lost decades” of deep recession and social dysfunction. The end of the boom should have plunged Japan into irrelevance, but that’s precisely when its cultural clout soared—when, once again, Japan got to the future a little ahead of the rest of us. Hello Kitty, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and multimedia empires like Dragon Ball Z were more than marketing hits. Artfully packaged, dangerously cute, and dizzyingly fun, these products gave us new tools for coping with trying times. They also transformed us as we consumed them—connecting as well as isolating us in new ways, opening vistas of imagination and pathways to revolution. Through the stories of an indelible group of artists, geniuses, and oddballs, Pure Invention reveals how Japan’s pop-media complex remade global culture.