Tag: Karaoke

My Turn

For years, Newsweek had devoted one-page My Turn for reader’s Op-ed. This move paved the way for crowdsourcing and blogging, which are both technology-enabled (same way the Karaoke machine let the audience to have their turn at the mike).

We will come to a point in the future where past practices (museum, musical hall and magazines) criss-cross with emerging ones (file sharing).

Top-down meets bottom-up.

Online games and gaming are taking away revenues from traditional casinos and sport venues.

The desire and drive to share have found a platform ( faster speed of upload.)

Brainstorming technique has been around in Group Communication, but it is stiffling and sterile.

Individual creativity has been around but it works best when not imposed.

In fact, the best contribution from team members comes intrinsically and accidentally.

(see latest Opinion Page in NYT on “the New Group Think”).

Tell all this to century-old bureaucracy (yet Wall Street is known to build colo centers right next to financial center, to gain those mili-second trading advantage. This was to show that speed  works both ways: it takes us up quickly, or down equally quickly e.g. flash crash).

Barnes and Nobles is now betting on its Nook e-readers.

Amazon on digital publishing.

Newsweek and US News and World Reports are focusing on in-depth reportage or University rankings.

I miss Newsweek’s My Turn, but I know it has outlived its time.

Now, we can view instant comments after a post.

Why wait for the editors to select (curate) and show to us?

It’s the age of personal computing, broadband on steroid and fast results at the poll.

Those who are quick to comment will get last-in first-out ranking.

There are ways now to accommodate everyone’s Turn.

Pre-Karaoke childhood

We always rushed through dinner to claim our living room space, or call it a stage.

Daddy’s mandolin, brother’s violin, and my guitar.

But we never played with one another, being from three different generations.

So “Du Am”, “Em Toi” and “Le Da” in mandolin.

Then “Serenade”, “Guitare D’Amour” either by violin or guitar.

Finally my turn, with the Beatles, Bee Gee or Bad Fingers.

I had never given any thought to the music of earlier generations.

But having lived in the US for most of my adult life, and now returned to the same place, I finally saw the connection:

music has been the invisible (but audible) links between us. Had there been a karaoke machine in the house, we would have fought over the mike.

But given that pre-karaoke era, the best we could do was to race through dinner to get first crack at the music room.

My Dad’s choice painted a vague but very sentimental pictures of North Vietnam where he used to live before the country got partitioned. Then through my brother’s choice, I had a peek at Johnny Holiday, Sylvie Vartan and Elvis Presley.

To me, those were “uncool” music, but I tolerated them.

My “youthful” music, by today’s standard, would be considered “uncool”.

Performers got wireless mikes, and could move about freely.

On YouTube, one can see how “stuck” the 60’s bands were to the confinement of the studio (lighting, cameras and boom mikes).

You can only do so much with dissolve and editing.

The best we could do in our time was those sound distortion accessories, once plugged into an electric guitar, produces solo material as you would hear from Santana.

I thought the world was already “flat” when Santana rules Woodstock (he recently married his drummer – a she).

A Facebook posting of “Le Da” brought all this back. Memories of yesterday, of rush dinners and spontaneous rehearsals, our secret sauce for survival. Now those survival instincts are returning like a long lost friend, whispering ” you don’t need all the gadget to be happy.”

In fact, overly accessorized society has produced more neuroses. Birds and lilies in the field don’t need to be adorned. They are beauties in their own rights. The funny thing about today’s headline in Yahoo, was that of Facebook founder riding a buffalo in Northern Vietnam.

“Ai bao chan trau la kho” (who said riding a buffalo was a chore). High tech needs high touch, the virtual needs the real. The Japanese knew a thing or two about these instinctual needs when inventing virtual pets, or a karaoke machine (without the band). The question is, with all the gadget for education and entertainment, are we learning more and singing better? I wish we (Dad, brother and me) had at least found one song we all loved to jam together. Ask your teenagers, if they would like to hang out with you or their friends?

And the band plays on

Your corporate planners booked an award trip at a remote location, complete with mixer party and Gala. Except for the entertainment part. How would you feel? Just pop in a DVD, have a few drinks? or resort to karaoke to save a few bucks?

We need artists, musicians and singers. We need actors who can portray a range of personalities.

Before music, there were words. Writers and coders who recorded human earliest attempt to leave behind and beyond death, some forms of communication. See me, hear me.

We need to acknowledge and be acknowledged.

Throw me a line, pass me the salt. Buy me a drink, show me the way.

In hard times, consumers cut spending (high gas price), hence live entertainment often is first to go.

But when music starts, we feel a surge of emotion, the affective. I did not know until recently that the Deer Hunter piece was also played by the Shadows (famous for Apache).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6gpa8nUa70&feature=related

The underlining sense of loss, of coming back to a no-longer home, because one has changed completely inside. It doesn’t matter that the same ensemble are still there. What changed was your view of the world, ill-exposed. Robert De Niro had to duck in the back of the taxi (while he never bent in war zone) urging it to drive pass the welcome home party. Shame, loss, self-alienation, self-recrimination. What on earth are we doing to ourselves. After putting a man on the moon, we could not bring him back to the welcoming arms of friends.

It’s not war that kills. It’s the shadow of war that lingers on, eating you up one cell at a time. Until you wake up one morning, and wish it were hell right then and there. He had to be back to the war zone, to get his friend out. Marines don’t leave marines behind. The choppers on the roof. The looting and shooting. Every man to himself. Baby got tossed over barbed wires at the embassy in hope of getting picked up by choppers (they must have confused between Operation Baby Lift vs Operation Frequent Wind) just to land on top of the Soviet-made tanks the next day for photo ops. Soldiers of the same side shooting civilians and each other. Commanders took their own bullets, an act viewed as coward for fear of reprisal , or bravery in the tradition of samurai.

A city under its own siege, like a three-legged stool, unable to decide which side to stand on. Money changers and side switchers.

The losing side lost their shirts. Underwent a humiliating stripping process at the camp. A coke and a sandwich, received with grace from the priest’s hand as if it were communion (not yet wading clear of the water, hence, like a forced baptism by fire and by water). Army in retreat. Democracy retrenched.

Lives got rebuilt. One toilet at a time, evacuees need to make a “janitorial decision”. Reverse social order. What’s your income level? Let’s see if you are qualified.

“Band on the run” was played over the radio while visas got processed. Temporary shelters, short-term mindset.

Life on hold. Future on pause. The sky is the limit except for turning back. “Do you know, where you’re going to” (Theme from Mahogany). ( Diana Ross)

And the band plays on. We need new tune for new times. Who needs liberal arts folks. Just let the machine synthesize.  So we got lip sync, and karaoke. One-man band and computer-generated poetry. Algorithm and outsourced blog.

Back to our corporate planners. At the end of the retreat, should you have it all out with a night of karaoke or hire professional musicians to show us “a time of your life”, when you still dream, explore possibilities and pursue “creative destruction”. Instead of urging employees to “think out of the box”, we should have never put them in one.

But if we did , the least we could do is to change the tune once in a while, knowing full well music started out with locked-in 7 notes. Yet the band plays on, each time, rendering a different interpretation. Try Catavina with different musicians: all out-of-the-box.