Karaoke nights a hit

Bongani Ndlovu Showbiz Correspondent
KARAOKE seems to be a hit among club patrons in Bulawayo as it is drawing a lot of patronage at the Karaoke nights being held at the Groove Night Club. The nights, which were launched in March, have steadily been gaining popularity with the mature and young at heart flocking to the club to sing their hearts out. Karaoke is a form of interactive entertainment in which amateur singers sing along to recorded music (a music video) using a microphone and public address system.

Saturday Leisure this week visited Groove Night Club to witness the Karaoke Nights. The crowd was not bad considering it was a Thursday. It was clear that the Thursday nights had been diarised by many as a day to sing their hearts out – judging by the number of patrons by 9.30PM when the singing begins.

If one wants to sing during the karaoke night, the process is very simple. They are given a song book which has a list of songs that they can choose from. They then fill in a slip and hand it to either the host Ally or DJ Dash.

Thereafter, you will be called to sing whichever song you would have chosen.
The music is typically a well-known song minus the lead vocals. The lyrics are displayed on the wall with a changing colour, which moves through the lyrics to guide the singer.
The wise waters for some are a blessing and a curse because having had one too many, people get the courage to request a song they want to sing. When they are on stage, they try their best to sing along – with cheers and booing from the audience, depending on your performance.

Some patrons take to the stage to support whoever would be singing and sing along with them.
The song book has tracks that date back to the late 70s, 80s and 90s, with a few from the mid 2000s and above. The songs with the most requests on any given night are Endless Love by Lionel Richie, Three Little Birds and Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley and Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye.

Romantics can be found in the crowd as some who come with their spouses sing love songs dedicated to them with John Legend’s All of me proving popular.
One of the DJs at the club said the objective was for patrons to have fun, at the same time singing songs that they enjoyed listening to when they were young.

The brains behind the Thursday Karaoke Nights, Wushe Wushe, said the concept came about after a realisation that there was not much entertainment for the mature in the city.
“It’s a series of concepts that we are trying out. We have been holding the karaoke nights since March and for the past month it has caught on. I realised that there was no entertainment that suits the mature,” he said.

Wushe said karaoke was not a competition but a way to have fun with friends and even family over a couple of drinks.
This reporter had a go at the karaoke as he sang a duet with a patron who did not want to be named for obvious reasons. Minus the encouragement of the wise waters, we went on stage to sing I Need a Girl (part one) by American rapper P Diddy featuring Usher and Loon from the 2002 album We Invented the Remix.

I discovered that it was an exhilarating experience and even though the lyrics are on the wall, one has to know a bit of the song to sing it well. When one does it well, you will hear an occasional scream from female patrons in the crowd. I felt like a star for the duration of the song. All in all it was a fun experience that I would do again.