Lifestyle
Song Song Revolution
Traditional Asian karaoke charts a hit with young clubgoers
jrl339@nyu.eduFrom the region famous for producing the wildly popular video game Dance Dance Revolution and the infamous crooning of American Idol contestant William Hung, another Eastern music sensation is breaking through in the United States: traditional Asian karaoke.
For most Americans, going out for a night of karaoke means hitting a loud, smoky bar, downing a few drinks, and acting like a fool for the evening. That scene is a far cry from the chic, professional settings of some of the Asian karaoke clubs in Flushing, Queens, home to New York City’s largest Chinatown, which have recently been gaining immense popularity among the city’s teens and twenty-somethings.
Traveling nearly 45 minutes to the last stop on the number 7 train in the borough of Queens may seem an extreme act in the name of karaoke, but it hasn’t deterred devotees from flocking to Flushing for a one-of-a-kind musical experience.
“I’ve always thought karaoke was a little hokey, but some friends brought me to a traditional karaoke club a few months ago, and now I’m hooked,” said Ann Cheng, 25, a student at Columbia University. Flushing, she says, "was kind of far away, but the places there have the best equipment and music, so it’s really worth it. There are a lot of immigrants there, and I think that’s why the karaoke is so good.”
Originating in Japan in the early 1970s, karaoke first became popular via the dinner parties of Japanese businessmen, then spread rapidly across Asia. It has since become deeply rooted in culture and entertainment throughout the Far East, inspiring a devoted following comparable to that of moviegoers in the United States. Asian karaoke-goers take the sport very seriously, often substituting tea for alcohol and competing to be the best, rather than the worst.
Fueled by immigration from Asia to the U.S., Flushing’s karaoke clubs have more than doubled in number in the past two years, going from just a few to almost ten. Monster Monster, a hip art-deco café established in 2004 and located up a flight of stairs in the heart of Flushing’s Chinatown, is the most popular of them all. Reservations are suggested by the management, since walk-in groups on weekends can expect to wait up to two hours for a room, on a line that stretches into the street.
In contrast to the bustling and almost gritty neighborhood below, Monster Monster offers a strikingly polished environment. Colorful pop art murals of dark female silhouettes, bright red lips and giant microphones cover the stairwell wall as one enters. Black marble floors, white textured walls and low-hung, geometric stained glass lights pave the way to a small bar and a dozen private karaoke rooms.
The club's daytime manager, 28-year-old Jimmy Lin of Great Neck, Long Island, says that unlike traditional establishments in Asia, Monster Monster almost exclusively caters to the under-30 crowd, and the most popular genres of music, as they are for most American karaoke aficionados, are pop songs and love ballads. All of the songs are played in combination with music videos, and though hundreds of English song selections are available, most of them have been covered by Asian artists, which makes the karaoke performance all the more entertaining to some young Western aficionados.
“I could go to any typical karaoke place and have a lot more English song choices than at one of the Chinese places, but that’s part of the fun,” said Sam Widen, 18, of Westchester. “It’s so funny to see how the videos are remade and songs are changed
by the Asian singers. It’s so much cooler.”
Also unlike typical American karaoke clubs, where the bar is the focus and the karaoke merely a colorful backdrop, Asian-style karaoke cafes consist of multiple rooms of varying sizes that are rented by the hour to parties of two or more. These studios afford guests privacy and the convenience of singing as much or as little as they want, when they want.
At Monster Monster, the small, dark rooms are outfitted with the most cutting-edge big-screen televisions, sound systems and computer technology available. Guests use computers to choose from a menu of more than 30,000 songs, which are constantly updated. A call button summons the wait staff of the full-service bar and restaurant on the premises.
“It’s a classy place,” said Mariah Munro, 20, a junior at New York University. “I go there with friends all the time. It’s getting pretty popular considering it’s so far off the beaten path. It can be a little expensive, but it’s always a blast and it’s totally different from anywhere else.”
Such a rich experience does come at a price. Though room rentals on week day and weekend afternoons run about $20 an hour, the price shoots to $40, $60 and $80 respectively for small, medium and large nighttime rooms. Though those prices may seem steep, each room is allowed to order food from the café’s menu for free, up to the amount they pay for the rooms.
While gaining steady popularity among young non-Asian Manhattanites and college students, clubs like Monster Monster still get the majority of their business from young Asian immigrants and Asian-Americans.
“It’s a release for me,” said Jay Chen, 22, an Iraq War veteran originally from China, and currently residing in Elmhurst, Queens. “You can express your feelings, when you can’t. We come a lot, I’ve been here twice already this week. It becomes a sort of lifestyle.”
A friend of Chen’s agreed, saying that for fun, there was almost nothing else for he and his friends to do.
“We go to celebrate, and we go when we aren’t feeling happy,” said William Lin, 22, also a China émigré now living in Elmhurst. “Lots of people come to forget everything. It’s to relax.”
Monster Monster
40-52 Main Street
Flushing, Queens, New York