Latino Music Cafe

Another way to enjoy Latin Music

Posted on 01. Jan, 2010 by Hector Aviles in Latino Music

Most people like music and most people that like music like to sing. You know who you are . It may be in the shower or in the car, when no one is around to hear your bad singing. Or it may be while doing a shore, or while walking. In the last few months, I’ve rediscovered Karaoke as another way that people enjoy Latin music, although there are many ways of doing this.

Many Ways to Sing with Karaoke

In Puerto Rico, my brother-in-law hired a little group for his small construction company’s Christmas party. This is really a “half-band”, as they have 2 singers (a guy and a gal) and another guy that plays percussion, all over a recorded musical background. So its really karaoke in steroids type of thing, and I have to tell you, it worked very well. The group had musical tracks for several types of Latin music, like Salsa, Merengue, Bachata, Traditional Christmas, etc. My in-law invited me and it was fun. After a while, people got up and started to sing. I took a couple of videos with my phone and photo camera of my brother-in-law singing and my sister almost died laughing out loud. The small band allows and actually encourages the attendees to step up to the mic and sing. They have the song lyrics in a Lyrics book, so people can basically do a live Karaoke. At the end of the day, they provide a pretty good service where you have lots of fun with a small budget.

Then for New Years in Mexico, one of my wife’s cousins brought a small Karaoke device used to connect a DVD player with two microphones to your home stereo in order to play karaoke DVDs. But those DVDs are limited in the repertoire. Our cousin didn’t do that. Instead of connecting a DVD player, he connected his laptop, which I helped him connect to my parent-in-law’s wireless Internet. And just like that, we had almost unlimited Karaoke thanks to YouTube.com. I wasn’t aware that you could find so many song lyrics and music in YouTube. Its amazing! After we had a late dinner and then had the New Year’s hugs and the kids broke the traditional “piñata”, the Karaoke fun started. Everyone took turns singing, from the young to the old; we sang everything from Shakira to Michael Jackson; from Gilberto Santa Rosa to Ruben Blades; from Juan Gabriel to Vicente Fernandez’s mariachi. We just kept going until 6 a.m., then decided to lay down before the sun came out.

Even before the Christmas holidays, I wrote here in LatinoWebCafe about a post-Thanksgiving get together we had in a friend’s house who has a mixer with a couple of microphones to sing over our favorite music. There are no lyrics this way but its equally fun.

Sing and Have Fun in Your Get-togethers

If you are like me that frequently have friends over your house or get-togethers, then I recommend you buy one of these Karaoke kits (for about $40 or a mixer for under $100) which you can find in the Internet. Try it! People just love to sing, and when you set it up in a way where its OK to sing good or bad, then people focus on fun and not on performance. This provides a great party alternative to complement playing dominoes, or cards, or just chatting away. You can have the kids do it while you chat with friends and warm up with a couple of drinks. Then the adults can join the singing. The setup is fairly simple and the fun is non-stop for everyone.

Ahh…and let me know how it works for you!

Tags: Christmas, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Karaoke, ruben blades, salsa, Shakira