Laugh­ing Bud­dha Fine Japan­ese Cui­sine Restau­rant, lo­cat­ed on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of- Spain, has em­barked on forg­ing a new fu­ture for Karaoke. The eatery pre­miered its YouTube Karaoke com­pe­ti­tion last Fri­day, a se­ries with its fi­nal sched­uled for Fri­day, March 4. The word "karaoke" is de­rived from the Japan­ese lan­guage and it's mean­ing comes from "kara," emp­ty (as in karate-emp­ty hand), and "oke" (short for oke­su­to­ra,) or­ches­tra. Rather than in­clud­ing both vo­cals and mu­sic, Karaoke tracks on­ly have the mu­sic. The vo­cals are pro­vid­ed by a live per­son (not a pro­fes­sion­al) who holds a mi­cro­phone and sings while fol­low­ing the words dis­played on a screen or in a book.

The idea for the com­pe­ti­tion was in­tro­duced by a pro­mo­tion­al com­pa­ny called Di­vine Junkie En­ter­tain­ment Group, head­ed by Dean "The Karaoke Guy" Calder, and is be­ing adapt­ed and put to test for the Car­ni­val sea­son. Com­pe­ti­tion is held every Fri­day evening, with doors open­ing from 5 pm and the ac­tu­al Karaoke com­pe­ti­tion start­ing at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8 pm. For in­vites or in­for­ma­tion, log un­to Club de Ve­gas on Face Book, or call 382-2333/387-2223 for fur­ther de­tails.