The winner of the Karaoke World Championships may not achieve world fame, but at least he or she won’t have to worry where the next meal is coming from — the top prize is 1 million Russian dumplings.
With an unusual purse like that, it’s clear that karaokists retain a sense of humor about a pursuit as derided as it is popular.
However, they’re also serious enough about it to have traveled from as far away as Australia and Nigeria for a three-day battle-of-the-no-bands in a Moscow banquet hall.
The first night of the competition on Thursday seems to show that karaoke is at a tipping point. It’s gone far beyond caterwauling in front of a group of sozzled buddies and regretting it the next morning; most of those on stage here have serious pipes and carefully worked-out moves. Yet it retains the casual camaraderie of a barroom at midnight.
“It’s a contest, yes, but it’s more like a family,” said Atte Hujanen, managing director of the Finland-based KWC Organization that is the equivalent of a sports governing body.
One woman’s rendition of Vogue proved his point. Imagine Madonna if she’d never been to a gym, moved awkwardly and dressed like a diplomat. Still, the applause was warm, cameras flashed and no journalists seemed inclined to ask if the performance was intended as some kind of ironic statement.
Karaoke actually seems to be one of the world’s few genuine irony-free zones. The performers don’t go for modernist mumbling or cryptic lyrics — they love to belt it out and they go for songs with heart-on-the-sleeve words. The show began with a group rendition of that apogee of bathos We Are The World and a probably inevitable version of My Way occurred not long thereafter.
Hujanen posited that it’s this penchant for intensity that makes karaoke especially appealing in propriety-intensive countries such as Japan, where it originated, and his homeland, where six of the eight world championships have been held.
“People in Japan and Finland, it’s in our nature that we’re pretty shy,” he said. With karaoke, “we can sing a heartbreaking ballad and then shut up again.”
It’s also liberating for serious performers because it doesn’t require them to pursue a particular genre or artistic vision, as they would if they were part of an actual band, said US contestant Edward Pimentel, a technician for a cellular phone company in Albuquerque.
“The places I go to have 20,000 songs. I can change every single night,” he said. “I can do whatever.” They can also choose to look whatever. The show on Thursday had the sartorial variation of a good neighborhood bar — some men with snap-brim hats looking like dudes on the make, some in sneakers and untucked shirts looking like they’d stopped in for a cold one after a long shift at a gas station.
However, the emotions were higher for the singers than in a bar, said Tami Marie, also of Albuquerque, a standout with a searing version of Pink’s Misery.
“Here, you feel like a real star ... I feel so blessed,” she gushed.
However, the most gushing person to take the stage arguably wasn’t a performer at all, but the Russian organizer of the competition, Alexander Shamaev.
“The goal for us is the unification of the entire planet under the banner of karaoke,” he declared. “We hope it will become the most massive sport on the planet.”
The competition concludes today with the final round after two days of preliminaries. The judges will choose one winner from each gender, and the audience will vote on which of all the contenders deserves the dumplings provided by one of the championship’s sponsors.
Pimentel’s not in it for that kind of dough. Asked what he would do if he won that prize, it was the first time — on or offstage — that he was lost for words.
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
MOGAMI-CLASS FRIGATES: The deal is a ‘big step toward elevating national security cooperation with Australia, which is our special strategic partner,’ a Japanese official said Australia is to upgrade its navy with 11 Mogami-class frigates built by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said yesterday. Billed as Japan’s biggest defense export deal since World War II, Australia is to pay US$6 billion over the next 10 years to acquire the fleet of stealth frigates. Australia is in the midst of a major military restructure, bolstering its navy with long-range firepower in an effort to deter China. It is striving to expand its fleet of major warships from 11 to 26 over the next decade. “This is clearly the biggest defense-industry agreement that has ever
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS