Karaoke
Karakoke (カラオケ) is a portmanteau of the words kara (空), meaning "empty", and oke, short for ōkesutora (オーケストラ), meaning "orchestra". Hence, karaoke means "empty orchestra".
History
On the Danish anime convention scene, karaoke first appeared during J-Popcon 2008. However, it was limited in that it only lasted roughly 1½ hours and started extremely late in the evening (by the time the event ended, it was just past midnight). Furthermore, the static playlist of an estimated 20 songs totalled was pre-set, meaning that the singers had limited choice of what song to sing and once a song had been sung it didn't reappear again. The choice of doing it this way was possibly due to J-Popkai wanting to 'test the waters before jumping in', but nonetheless, the event proved successful and rather popular.
The event re-appeared at Genki 2009, during the planning of which the Genksters aimed to overcome the 'short-comings' of the event as it was seen during J-Popcon 2008. This was done by having the event start earlier, last longer, have more songs (+150 songs), ask the people what songs they would be interested in singing so everything didn't ride on what songs the Genksters liked, make the playlist dynamic (so the singer coming up could choose what song to sing), and so on. The event proved to be a massive hit thanks to these improvements and was probably the most popular ongoing event of the con.
Appearences
- In chronological order