Karaoke (Japanese: from kara, "empty", and ôkesutora, "orchestra") is a form of entertainment where recorded music accompanies an amateur singer who sings along with the accompaniment on microphone. The music is of a well-known song in which the voice of the original singer is absent or reduced in volume. Lyrics are usually also displayed, sometimes including color changes synchronized with the music, on
music video to help with the sing-along. Karaoke has been a popular form of entertainment in East Asia since at least the 1980s, and has since spread to other parts of the world. Karaoke engenders quite a bit of culture specific to its enthusiasts, and this culture, unsurprisingly, varies from country to country. Much of the information in this entry is currently specific to karaoke's area of origin in the Far East.
Word origin:
The Japanese word stems from the words kara, meaning "empty" (as in karate, "empty hand") and oke which is short for ôkesutora, meaning "orchestra". The words together make a contraction literally meaning "empty orchestra". It used to be a slang in media where a live performance is substituted by a prerecorded music and thus it is written in katakana. The term karaoke can be interpreted as "virtual orchestra" because one can specify a key to the music and start singing along without the presence of a live band or orchestra. In the United States, the word is often pronounced as "karioki". The Japanese
pronunciation is "karaoke".
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