"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."
-Maya Angelou, on the subject of karaoke, not civil rights.
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Think back to before you trained yourself to bob gently and hum quietly with your paper thin iPod to the precious bands on your censored Facebook favorites lists. When you lived in a town with three identical mainstream pop stations that scored your trips to the drugstore with the click of the blinker keeping your tempo to an indulgent Top 40 belt out. When you joined the grade school choir even though you had to plug one ear to drown the two all-stars who could harmonize, because that embarrassing syncopation styling you wanted to try copying from a pop star could get covered up in the crowd. You didn't worship the nuances of Bob Dylan's timbre, & you didn't need Rock Band or the kids from Glee or American Idol audition outtakes to pose as guilty pleasures to remind you that good-bad songs & bad-good singing belong to everyone.
Chances are you had a favorite song before you had your first tooth. Watch awkward loving families with their infants & a pop song. There's beautiful proof that singing & dancing are innately & universally fun, & the rest is learned. There are professionals & raw talented virtuosos performing as chefs, lawyers, authors...but you don't cook for your family, argue with your boss, write emails to your friends self-consciously concerned with rivaling those craftspeople. Tonedeaf, shy, low on iTunes, clueless on lyrics, re-living the glory of your lost high school musical theatre days, afraid to impersonate, inclined to yell, bad mood, too drunk, not drunk enough - we've heard you all say you "can't sing" [well]. It doesn't change the fact that deep down you want to, & therefore you should. We (Valerie & Gayathri) most unabashedly, enthusiastically, & hyper-frequently do. Made possible by New York City & the several institutions that house this non-art form of karaoke, that we affectionately call 'roke. This blog is about the benefits, pitfalls, triumphs, lessons of those experiences. We hope you enjoy what we have to impart.
Welcome to Empty Orchestra. We'll leave the mic on for you.
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Isn't that hauntingly beautiful.
Two girls. Two mics. By Artist. By Title.
Your Hosts / Songstresses
- Valerie + Gayathri
- For Val it's about singing and not about being good at it. As she evolved from need-to-be-drunk-to-sing-in-front-of-people to I-can-roke-alone-sober-at-2pm-on-a-Wednesday, she has fallen deeply in love with this activity.
For Gayathri it's about the art therapy & pop culture theory, but mostly the levity with loved ones. There's pick-a-mix radio hits Memorex cassette tape out there with her self-recorded third grade voice that saw this all coming.
V + G can be found together, separately or amidst large groups of diverse friend crowds in the private room karaoke scene upwards of fortnightly.
Care to sing along? Send us your musical notes: wewillrokeyou@gmail.com
Our Signature Songs
- G&V: Leona Lewis - Bleeding Love
- V: Nelly Furtado - Say it Right
- G: Erasure - A Little Respect
- V: Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah
- G: Alannah Myles - Black Velvet
- V: Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights
- G: Aaliyah - Are You That Somebody?
Thanks SO much for doing this, ladies!! You are the best.
ReplyDeleteHere's my thoughts on 'Roke:
I can't dance. In fact, I am TERRIFIED of going out to clubs and always pull some lame excuse when my friends want to "go out dancing!!". At weddings, I sit happily amongst the elders and listen to their life stories, while my friends grind, Electric Boogie Woogie, and do other things with their hips that I can only imagine. At this point, even alcohol doesn't help-- I am THAT self-conscious. It's awful, because I love to get my daily intake of cardio, but I have a feeling that dancing will never be it.
But to make up for it, I roke my heart out. I can sing as loud and obnoxiously as I like, and not have any qualms about it. Grocery stores and CVS's are a favorite.
I think my first 'roke adventure was when I was a wee lassie, reading the liner notes to Madonna's Immaculate Collection and realizing that if I held my little pale blue Conair brush just right, it could simulate a mic. Cherish was my song of choice, and since then, I've never looked back.
I like to throw in a random Fiona Apple here and there, but these days, I'm more of an ELO/Billy Joel/Kenny Rogers/Johnny Cash fan. They better suit my mezzo-soprano ways.