The four-day, three-night tournament, held last July, was the brainchild of Kari Hujanen, a Finnish high school physical education teacher and former speed skater who was three-tenths of a second away from reaching the 1972 Winter Olympics. "If [I'd been] one step faster, there wouldn't be a Karaoke World Championships," he says, with minimal regret, in the cramped trailer where he runs the contest with his wife and daughter. After hanging up his skates, he opened a restaurant, dabbled in politics (he still serves on the Heinola city council), and finally became a teacher; it was on a 1999 field trip to Spain that Hujanen first sang a karaoke version of the traditional Spanish love song "Amor, Amor." "It was more exciting than skating," he says. Soon he was entering local competitions and national contests; then he thought, "Why isn't there a karaoke Olympics?"
In search of contestants, Hujanen, 54, reached out via the Internet to karaoke clubs as far away as Australia, South Africa, and the United States. He even contacted venues in Japan-where karaoke was invented in the 1970s, so that businessmen could unwind by gathering drunkenly in bars to warble mistranslated Neil Diamond lyrics. But Japan declined to send any singers to Finland to compete for the top prize of 1,100 euros (plus a trophy and a CD boom box). "They might be pissed off that I thought of this first," Hujanen asserts.
At the fairgrounds, the smell of frying sausage floats through the air. A booth-lined midway christened Karaoke Street is the contest's main drag, where vendors sell Karjala draft beer and bootleg sing-along CDs of Kylie Minogue's greatest hits. To the right is the rehearsal tent, where contestants and audience members can practice and where the World Donut Eating Championships are simultaneously being held. To the left is a crowded beer tent, and in the middle is center stage, where 70 of Europe's most dedicated-if not most talented-karaoke singers will soon compete.
When the Karaoke World Championships open on Thursday, July 24 at 6 p.m., the contestants outnumber the spectators. Hujanen, the omnipresent host, begins by introducing the judges-a rotating five-person panel composed of music professionals and educators, a violin player, and an opera singer-who will score the competitors on expression, stage presence, tempo, entertainment value, and pitch control. Had events gone according to Hujanen's original plan, countries from every time zone would have held their own tournaments to choose their competitors for the KWC, but come show time, anyone with the guts and 30 euros is allowed to compete. The small, docile crowd is populated with the parents and children of contestants, as well as drunks, old ladies toting dogs in their purses, and tattooed Finnish rock kids, all of whom watch as karaoke-spinning disc jockeys (referred to as "KJs"), truck drivers, and bouncers take turns performing. A 30-year-old Finnish woman named Sari Mynttinen explains the lure of professional karaoke: "When I was three, I said to my mama, 'I'm going to be a singer,' but Mama always said, 'You have to get a real job.' I've been a KJ now for nine years. I own my equipment, and I am a singer, even without a band."
Two of the first ten songs are "It's Raining Men," and eight of them are performed by Finns. Despite Hujanen's invitations, only England, Norway, Austria, Sweden, Latvia, and Poland have sent performers. "It's not who didn't come, but who did," he says. Indeed, contestant No. 11 is Armi Flink, a gypsy from Lapland who came to the contest with her four sisters, and the sweat she generates during her stomping, snarling rendition of "I Will Survive" smears her heavy makeup across her face. When Flink has finished her song, the applause is so relentless it drowns out contestant No. 12's second chorus. (The scores she receives from the judges, as with all other contestants, are kept secret.)
The audience swells to perhaps 300 as the night progresses, and in the stands, Alek Styrna beats an imaginary drum, blows an air horn, and cheers for the other performers. He saves his loudest ovation for Christine Aas Hals, a 23-year-old Norwegian who sings Shakira's "Whenever, Wherever" while wearing an elaborate brown-suede bra-and-skirt combo that's as tight as her choreography. She doesn't necessarily sound better than the Latvian woman who aped Madonna or the young Swedish man who crooned "Un-Break My Heart," but she puts on a show: Aas Hals spins around, slaps her thighs, and arches her back with such force that her breasts pop out of her tie top. Styrna opens with Art Company's "Susanna," a catchy bit of chorus-heavy Euro-schlock that he sings in Finnish (the lyrics, written out phonetically, hang around his neck on a shoelace). During the chorus, he improvises, "Christine, Christine / I'm crazy loving you," and leads the audience in a "Christine, Christine" call and response. He swings from the scaffolding, jumps into the crowd, and makes his love o ect blush.
"I feel like a movie star," says Aas Hals, giggling on the balcony of the plush Hotel Kumpeli as her personal stylist attends to her frizzy blonde curls. Dressed in a Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt, Billabong surf shorts, and stilettos, she picks at a bowl of fresh fruit and reflects on last night's performance. "When I'm old and have wrinkled little breasts, I'll be able to tell my grandkids that I once was Shakira," she says. Aas Hals traveled to the competition with her manager and stylist, while 26 of her countrymen-including her brother and their divorced parents-took a 26-hour bus ride to watch her perform. A construction worker and aspiring pop star, Aas Hals bankrolls her posse with sponsorship money from a Norwegian-based karaoke website. More than anything, she wants to be a respected singer/songwriter like her idol, Bjork. "I know what it takes to get that big break," Aas Hals says. "This contest is basically a rehearsal, a step on the way to becoming a star."
She didn't always sing karaoke. "I thought it was so stupid," she says, "I mean, all you do is follow a dumb bouncing ball." Aas Hals left Norway at age 20, because her parents wanted her to be a doctor or an engineer, and auditioned for Stockholm's exclusive Kulturama music school. "All I knew was I wanted to be a singer. I had no idea how to start." Even though she was rejected by the university, she moved to Stockholm anyway, where she encountered some girls she had met at her Kulturama audition. They took pity and brought her to a bar. "They had all gotten in [to the school]," Aas Hals says, plucking a grape from its stem with her teeth. "There was a karaoke contest that night, and I won-I didn't think karaoke was stupid anymore."
With a thousand spectators crowding into Friday night's semifinals, contestant Jan-Mikael Pennanen, 36, stashes a bottle of brandy in the back pocket of his black leather jeans. "I told my wife, 'If I pass out, just pour some over my face,'" he says, but his energetic rendition of A-ha's "Take On Me" scores big with the increasingly animated crowd. In the audience, Noora Lehtinen, the winner of Finland's trials for the World Championships, has been chain-smoking since the show began. The 22-year-old has short, spiky blonde hair and wears the sleeves of her T-shirt rolled up to show off a warrior eagle tattoo on her right arm. Pale and shaky before taking the stage, Lehtinen is confident as she sings "Wind Beneath My Wings" before a mob that has grown to nearly 3,000. Afterward, over a beer, Lehtinen watches Aas Hals sprawl out on the stage. Tonight, she is performing Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" in a low-cut white wedding dress, acting out the lyrics as she sings. She feigns being lost and brings her hand over her eyes as if searching for her missing lover. She gets down on all fours and does two barrel rolls before hitting her piercing last note. "It's just too much," Lehtinen says dismissively. "There's something ugly about the way she performs." The three rows of Norwegians in matching yellow T-shirts all waving their small Norwegian flags would probably disagree.
At 1:15 a.m., the Finnish sky casts a dull silver spotlight on Kari Hujanen as he invites the survivors onstage, one by one. Styrna holds his head in his hands. Britain's Uche Eke paces backstage. A pair of Austrian contestants sit together in the front row, holding hands. When Aas Hals is called from the Summer Theatre's last row, she jumps up and down and puts on a bright yellow T-shirt like her fellow Norwegians. A disqualified Finnish teenager runs onto Karaoke Street in tears. The Austrian couple are incensed that they failed to make the cut. "This is the championship of Heinola," says the female contestant, clenching her fists. "It has fuck-all to do with the world."
Eke spends Saturday afternoon inside the Summer Theatre, pacing the wet grass. His weekend has already been monumental. He had his face in the local paper even before performing his first song, hooked up with Aas-Hal's six-foot Swedish personal stylist before his second, and had the crowd chanting his name before his third. "I woke up famous in Finland," says Eke, 31. "Maybe it's because I'm the only black person here." He has a harmonica-size scar on top of his head, which he vaguely explains is the result of a pair of rusty scissors and an Italian ex-girlfriend. "That's why I never tried properly singing," he says, pointing to the discoloration where his hair has begun to grow back. "I like karaoke because you can disappear."
Born in Wales, Eke moved to Nigeria in the mid-'80s, where he escaped a kidnapping attempt and survived a hydrochloric acid attack. "There were some ritualistic killings," he says. "My mother is white, and people thought if they cut off my head, money would come out of my mouth." His parents divorced, and he received a scholarship to study aerospace engineering in Virginia, but he developed severe allergies. "I called myself Fish Face because my eyes were puffed out from the pollen, and my scar used to bleed." So he moved to England, where he eventually got a job working in the IT department at Charles Schwab. He began singing and playing bass guitar in a church choir. When he was promoted to Schwab's international desk, a coworker's wife suggested he sign up for the KWC. Then, in February 2003, Schwab announced that his department would be eliminated. Shortly after he returns to England, he will be unemployed. "It's make-or-break time for me!"
As the KWC finals begin, the contest has been transformed. For the Finnish spectators, who dance in front of the stage with their children atop their shoulders, this is the Super Bowl and an Abba reunion concert rolled into one. Even the eliminated singers stand on the benches to snap photographs of and get autographs from their favorite contestants. The ten remaining performers have elevated their shows as well: One's dressed like a feline to perform "Memory," from Cats, and another wears a slicker and totes an umbrella for the umpteenth encore of "It's Raining Men." Alone backstage, Aas Hal is decked out in a blue sequined gown. "I haven't had any rest, my voice hurts, I'm tired," she says. "If I can't handle this, how am I going to become a star?" When she takes the stage, her notes are much shorter than those in her previous numbers, and her cover of Whitney Houston's "Run to You" doesn't get anyone dancing. She shimmies across the stage and misses some lyrics to audibly catch her breath. When she freezes on the song's abrupt final beat, her face is a mixture of determination and relief.
Eke is the contest's final performer, and by the time he takes the stage in his black suit and white turtleneck, the sausage vendors from Karaoke Street have joined the 5,000 fans on their feet. Even the judges applaud when he stands center stage, bows, says "kiitos" (Finnish for "thank you"), and begins Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon." He vamps just as Frank himself would have, inserting high notes and laughing at himself when he fails to affect a low bass. When he claps his hands above his head, the crowd follows. Eke finishes his performance by making pistols with his hands, shooting into the crowd. "I love you! Thank you, Heinola," he shouts. When the music stops, he sings the last bars a cappella. "I love you, Heinola. You flew me to the moon!"
Afterward, the ten finalists assemble onstage and lock arms like it's the last night of summer camp, and Kari Hujanen announces the winners with parental pride. In the women's category, Noora Lehtinen finishes fourth, her thin smile barely distracting from the death stare in her eyes, and the winner is a hard-rocking 23-year-old Brit named Danni Gadby, who earned her trophy with a spirited, fist-pumping performance of "I'm Every Woman." Christine Aas Hals finishes third. "I think I've faced the pressure that a real singer feels," she says. "It wasn't always fun, but this is a good opportunity to determine which side you are on. Do you continue or move home? Get a real job or write your own songs? I want to leave karaoke; I just don't know if I can." In the men's category, Alek Styrna takes fifth place; he grabs the microphone to invite the entire audience to an after-party. Jan-Mikael Pennanen takes third, and second place goes to a hulking, sweet-singing Finn. But the KWC belonged to one man, and the crowd is enthusiastically chanting "U-che, U-che," before it is announced that the about-to-be-out-of-work crooner from England has taken first prize.
At a postperformance party at the Casino, a club just outside the fairgrounds in the shadow of center stage, Styrna is dancing with the girls who filled the KWC's front row, Aas Hals is buried in a booth full of Norwegians, and Eke is sandwiched between Gadby and Aas Hals' stylist. The sun changes from gray to gold as the contestants reunite at the bar, and all the squinty, drowsy eyes in the room are focused on this improbable group as they bring their hands and feet together to reproduce the boom-boom-clap, boom-boom-clap percussion that another over-the-top band from another over-the-top era made synonymous with victory. One last time, the karaoke champions of the world are going to sing.
