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Where does Karaoke (the word) come from?
The word karaoke comes from Japan. It is Japanese for 'empty orchestra', a name for singing to recorded music instead of a live band, and it travelled around the world with the sing-along machines that Japanese bars took up in the 1970s.
An 'empty orchestra'
Karaoke joins two Japanese words. Kara means 'empty', and oke is short for ōkesutora, the Japanese form of the English word orchestra, so the word that came back to English already had a piece of English inside it. In Japan it first belonged to broadcasting, where it meant cheap, ready-made backing music on discs or tapes, used instead of live musicians. English dictionaries date the word in English to the late 1970s.
From Kobe bars to the world
Daisuke Inoue played in a band in the bars and clubs of Kobe. Asked by a client to play for him on a trip he could not join, he sent a tape of his music instead. From 1971 he rented out to bars coin-operated machines made from a car stereo, a coin box and a small amplifier, and they caught on. He never patented them. In the 1980s bigger Japanese companies brought out LaserDisc machines with lyrics on screen, and karaoke spread across Asia and beyond.
Why people think of the Philippines
The Philippines has its own strong claim to the machine. The Filipino entrepreneur and piano maker Roberto del Rosario first built his Sing-Along System as a teaching aid for singing students at his music school, then adapted it for amateur, recreational use from 1975. He was granted patents for it in 1983 and 1986. Such machines were probably invented more than once, but the name the world adopted is Japanese.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org ↗ · etymonline.com ↗ · wipo.int ↗ · sg.emb-japan.go.jp ↗
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