singing Bob Marley "One Love" to a room full of middle aged semi-professional enka singers in Shikoku
i have many beautiful memories with bob marley's voice as my soundtrack:
- 12 years old, sitting by a fake fireplace while my bro plays nintendo
- 20 years old, singing with a truck full of american and malagasy students through the arid south to Faux-Cap
- 23 years old, singing with KY in a deserted parking lot in Cleveland, OH
and now, this:
one night in Kochi, my dad and i went out to eat on my aunt's tab. we went to a fancy izakaya where i had the best seared bonito (katsuo no tataki) of my life. afterwards, just as i was getting sleepy, my aunt dragged us in a cab to the suburbs for a night of karaoke and whiskey.
it was a one-room bar with 5-6 tables full of middle-aged men and women singing enka ballads as if they were on national television. i was probably the only person under 40. of course, everyone has to sing, so i pored through the tomes of songs for something i could possibly do justice to, which is when i found good old Bob. The problem is i can only really sing Three Little Birds without breaking glass, and all there was was One Love and maybe No Woman No Cry.
So i picked One Love, forgetting that you have to have that wonderful roots reggae wail to be able to sing the hook. I also forgot that the hook is repeated about a hundred bajillion times. Other things I did not know: the version of Bob Marley on this particular system was not the same as the Legend CD that i own and that everyone i know in the US owns and listens to; the tempo is breakneck; japanese-supertechnology allows for the adjustment of pitch to match each singer's range and so if you start higher than your range because you are nervous (which is what i always do) then you have to stay there for the rest of the song; etc.
it's easy to overlook these things when everyone around you is semi-pro and sings karaoke more than once a week or at least more than once or twice a year, which is how often i get around to it. and no, singing along to the Bob Marley Legends CD while stoned does not count as practice.
- 12 years old, sitting by a fake fireplace while my bro plays nintendo
- 20 years old, singing with a truck full of american and malagasy students through the arid south to Faux-Cap
- 23 years old, singing with KY in a deserted parking lot in Cleveland, OH
and now, this:
one night in Kochi, my dad and i went out to eat on my aunt's tab. we went to a fancy izakaya where i had the best seared bonito (katsuo no tataki) of my life. afterwards, just as i was getting sleepy, my aunt dragged us in a cab to the suburbs for a night of karaoke and whiskey.
it was a one-room bar with 5-6 tables full of middle-aged men and women singing enka ballads as if they were on national television. i was probably the only person under 40. of course, everyone has to sing, so i pored through the tomes of songs for something i could possibly do justice to, which is when i found good old Bob. The problem is i can only really sing Three Little Birds without breaking glass, and all there was was One Love and maybe No Woman No Cry.
So i picked One Love, forgetting that you have to have that wonderful roots reggae wail to be able to sing the hook. I also forgot that the hook is repeated about a hundred bajillion times. Other things I did not know: the version of Bob Marley on this particular system was not the same as the Legend CD that i own and that everyone i know in the US owns and listens to; the tempo is breakneck; japanese-supertechnology allows for the adjustment of pitch to match each singer's range and so if you start higher than your range because you are nervous (which is what i always do) then you have to stay there for the rest of the song; etc.
it's easy to overlook these things when everyone around you is semi-pro and sings karaoke more than once a week or at least more than once or twice a year, which is how often i get around to it. and no, singing along to the Bob Marley Legends CD while stoned does not count as practice.
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