Karaoke-fu

In Korea, they don’t have “karaoke”. They have “noraebang”, from “norae” meaning song, and “bang” meaning room. Song-room. I’ve decided, though, for the purposes of this writing to use the term “karaoke”. Karaoke means something to people. It’s more than simply a word to describe a machine. Rather, it describes an act. You do karaoke. Foreigners over here don’t refer to “doing noraebang”. We say “going to a noraebang”. The act of singing along to ridiculous reproductions of popular songs while the words flash on a screen, either to the joy or the despair of present company will always be “karaoke”. So to any of my fellow waygooks who might be reading this, consider that an explanation for my use of Japanese nomenclature.

Conventional wisdom states that being successful at karaoke is all about confidence. Throw yourself into the performance with all the gusto you can summon and you’re sure to win the crowd. Show them your swagger and never look back. Bonus points for singing without looking at the lyrics. Pick songs that people think they’d have a hard time doing themselves, then belt them out without a trace of nerves, and that, in a nutshell, is what a great karaoke performance is all about.

For the most part, I agree with all of that. I have a couple of quibbles with it, but in general, that’s all true. Karaoke, like so many other things, is an activity which is easy to take for granted, but can speak volumes about people. You’ll get a pretty good picture of a person’s confidence level by doing karaoke with them. It doesn’t take long to spot it, either. You’ll know the karaoke pros by two things: their energy and their level of comfort. Comfort-level is the really telling sign. An unconfident person who’s seen a few good performers might be aware that he should put in as much energy as he can, and that’s good, but it’s a hundred times harder to fake being comfortable in your own skin. When you take an energetic perfomance, and add visible discomfort, you get camp. Camp can be fun, too, but whenever I see it (or catch myself indulging in it), I feel like the performer would rather be showing his or her sincere emotions—that is, to be rather than to seem confident—but just can’t quite make it happen. So the quest to deliver a great karaoke performance becomes a challenge where you must triumph in battle over yourself.

One other thing worth noting here is that you should always remember to play to your strengths. If your falsetto is your best voice, sing the Bee Gees, sing Mika, sing Queen, sing Scissor Sisters, but please please please, don’t even consider Marvin Gaye. It’s not a failing of confidence and character to steer clear of your weaknesses. In fact, a false denial of those weaknesses would be the real failing of confidence. To be a good performer, you must know just what it is that you do well. Then, learn to do it even better.

I’m not sure whether, or to what extent, all of this is applicable to other aspects of life. I have a feeling that it’s relevant, but not so much so that it’s worth thinking about all day. I do feel that having regular experiences in noraebangs throughout Seoul has served as a sort of barometer of my self-confidence over the last eight and half months. When I’m all set to belt ‘em out all night long, things must be going alright. And you know what? That seems to happen more and more lately.

Good night, world. Happy 4th.

Randy