The Gigantic Karaoke Machine

Posted on February 11th, 2010. Written by Rico.

Clearly, karaoke doesn’t represent cutting-edge technology, but many Filipinos have taken it to heart—as they belt out their favorite tunes. And Manila apparently is one big karaoke machine.

From Manila Envelope: Dispatches from the End of the World, Lourd H. De Veyra writes:

Manila is a gigantic karoke machine, and I meant that literally. Twenty-four hours a day, someone is wailing Air Supply songs into a spit-soaked microphone. Sidewalk vendors have stereo components screaming next to their fake designer jeans and sneakers—cheesy Eurodisco has become part of conventional salesmanship. Jeepneys, the cheapest form of public transportation, have sound systems loud enough to pulverize cockroaches. Taxis and buses honk incessantly, as if it were required by driving etiquette. Car owners modify their exhaust pipes into the big-ass kind that produces a depp, urgent whoosh, never mind that traffic moves at a perpetual crawl. The tricycles sound like chainsaws assaulting the endangered rainforest. And buses are turned to idiotic pop stations whose disc jockeys fake American accents as if their visa depended on it.

De Veyra is of course the vocalist and songwriter of the Radioactive Sago Project.

(Photo from Flickr by besighyawn)