A new wave of karaoke enthusiasm has transformed an entire generation into confident singers, bridging gaps across age and culture.
Itanagar, India Jul 21, 2026 ALN: [ Biren Dutta ]
A fever has quietly gripped this generation, and unlike most fevers, nobody wants the cure. It has no thermometer reading, no hospital bed, only a microphone, a glowing screen, and a scrolling set of lyrics.
Everybody has a secret song – a Rafi classic that still gives goosebumps, a Kishore Kumar heartbreak number, an Asha Bhonsle cabaret song, a ghazal in the style of Mehdi Hassan, a western number recalling Kenny Rogers, Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston or Adele, a favourite lok geet, or a local artist’s tune that feels like home. For the longest time, that song stayed locked in the bathroom, murmured under running water and nowhere else. Today, it comes roaring out at full volume, and an entire generation, once too shy to sing a single line aloud, has caught karaoke fever and shows no sign of wanting to recover.
In the old order, public singing belonged to the gifted few. A stage, an orchestra, a harmonium accompanist – these were rare privileges, handed only to those already anointed as ‘singers’. For most people, performing meant, at best, a school week celebration, a charity show, or a festival evening where a handful of brave souls carried the entertainment while everyone else clapped politely and wished they too could sing like that. Everyone else simply listened, sang only for themselves in the shower or under their breath, and never once imagined a microphone would land in their own hand.
Then technology crept in, and the fever began to spread. The mobile phone, cheap data, and platforms like YouTube and Gaana dismantled the wall between listener and singer. Anyone could pull up the lyrics and a video of Lata Mangeshkar or Shreya Ghoshal – or of a home-grown favourite like Talut Mize or Sida Banor – and sing along until their own version felt uncannily close to the original. Melodious or cacophonous, young or old, it no longer mattered. Everybody, quite literally, became a singer, and the infection, so to speak, was unstoppable.
If the smartphone opened the door, karaoke walked straight in and turned the fever into an epidemic. Affordable machines, readymade tracks, and instant internet access now do the job an entire orchestra once did, stripping away every excuse for staying seated. The moment the track begins, even a first-time singer feels transported – feels, briefly, like Rafi, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar or Asha Bhonsle, or, closer home, like Talut Mize, Moge Diji, Sida Banor, or Taba Chake, Shava Yun, the local voices whose songs first stirred something inside them. The track lends its polish, and the singer borrows, for a few glorious minutes, the greatness of the original – pitch-perfect in their own head, at the very least. Once the microphone lands in a first-timer’s hand at a karaoke party, it does not leave without four or five songs behind it.
There is something moving about who ends up singing together once this fever takes hold. A grandmother who once hummed lullabies in her mother tongue now duets with her grandson on a Kishore Kumar number, neither one embarrassed, both laughing at the missed notes. Karaoke does not just make individuals sing; it makes families and friend circles sing together, across generations that might otherwise share very little musical common ground.
Every birthday, marriage function, victory celebration, picnic or friends’ outing now runs on karaoke; there is always a queue for the mic. A resort evening by the riverside, drinks flowing among old friends, invariably turns into a full-blown karaoke blast, the playlist swinging from an elder’s Rafi request to the youngest cousin’s latest rap number, the song choice itself a quiet giveaway of who is holding the mic and which era they grew up in. And nobody is immune. At a party of their own supporters, politicians fresh from an afternoon rally will, by evening, croon an old Kishore number with theatrical flourish. At his own farewell, the senior officer who signs stern files all day will happily butcher a Rafi classic and demand an encore. At a village function, the local leader takes his turn with equal enthusiasm; at a college get-together, the once-shy student does the same. Different parties, different crowds, yet the same fever, the same eagerness, the same discovery each time – that titles are best left at the door along with the shoes. Bars, too, have caught on; a good karaoke night fills every table faster than any discount on drinks ever could.
This fever has also become a genuine talent-hunting platform. Indian Idol inspired regional versions – Idol, Siang Idol, Adi Idol, Nyishi Idol, Idu Idol – built on the same karaoke technology that first let a shy teenager sing confidently at a family gathering. Many of today’s genuine singers first found their footing on a karaoke machine before any proper stage. That first party performance is often just the start; the recording finds its way onto Facebook and YouTube, with a thumbnail and a caption announcing a fresh cover, signed off with the now-familiar refrain: like, share, follow for more. Comments fill up with encouragement, view counts climb, and a confidence builds that no stage announcement ever could. For many, this cycle of upload and applause is the real audition that eventually leads to
The roll call of talent at any local karaoke evening could fill an audition on its own: an elderly Idu couple stealing the show with a melodious Hindi duet; a soft-spoken Galo singer delivering a soulful Rafi number that stops conversations mid-sentence; a Nyishi and a Wancho rapper trading verses over a thumping beat; an Adi youth belting out Kishore Kumar with all his mischievous charm; an Apatani girl, once too shy to sing before her own family, doing full justice to a Lata Mangeshkar melody. None trained for a stage a day in their life. The fever trained them instead, one borrowed melody at a time.
What has unfolded is a quiet democratisation of an art form, and this fever has spread across every corner of . From the monastery hills of Tawang, where a Monpa folk tune once travelled no further than the courtyard, to the far eastern reaches of Longding, where a Wancho chant now just as easily opens a karaoke evening, and everywhere between – among the Nyishi, Galo, Adi, Tagin, Apatani, Nocte and Tutsa – a local tune once sung only around a hearth can today be shared with a community scattered across towns and states, keeping a language and a memory alive in a single upload. In a state of so many tribes and dialects, this shared love for the microphone has quietly become its own common language. The old radio has given way to the glowing karaoke screen, but the feeling remains the same one the elders knew around the fire – a song, once sung together, belongs to everyone who hears it. Somewhere in this new chorus of newly converted singers, chances are, a familiar voice has already joined in – perhaps even the reader’s own. And, it must be confessed, the writer is no exception. (The contributor is Principal, DIET, Roing, Lower Dibang Valley)
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