KaraOakland’s first season—filled with costumes, power ballads, and dance routines—ends Monday night at Legionnaire.
by Jose Fermoso April 5, 2024, 1:21 p.m. (Oaklandside.org)
As the sun set on a brisk and busy Telegraph Avenue last Monday, five people dressed up as a Master Chief from Halo, a Black Hercules, and a trio of sparkly-dressed magical dancers walked into a bar. They had not gathered to battle the growing number of Twitter trolls in Oakland or to start a bar fight. But their mission would be no less taxing. They were there to compete in a competition that has put a new spin on competitive singing: a wild karaoke tournament decided by ranked-choice voting.
The battle over the next two hours was intense. Some predicted it would be replayed in people’s minds for generations, or at least for a couple of hours on Instagram.
The KaraOakland karaoke league began in February at Legionnaire Saloon and has quickly become one of the city’s most sought-after nightlife experiences. At least, that’s according to the self-described “huge extroverts” who were attending the party earlier this week.
Over the last two months, five teams of five to eight contestants each have battled every Monday for karaoke supremacy. Members sing songs together or as individuals, depending on the song, holding court on the short stage at the colorful, lit-up corner of the bar near the jangling pinball machines. The songs, usually a mix of genres from the past 60 years, are chosen by the teams to maximize creativity, glitz, and harmonies. It gets loud, but usually no one cares because they’re either having such a good time or they’re in shock about the talented renditions performed by the funnily-costumed characters.
As participants and attendees have shared videos of their performances online, they’ve inadvertently sparked a conversation about the discrepancy between a joyful public event full of diverse people smack in the middle of Oakland and how this contrasts with talk of crime and a grim “doom loop” that has recently colored much of the discourse about the city—especially on social media.
“I was saddened by the doom loop talk. I feel like there’s so much life here,” said Melody White, the founder of KaraOakland. “I feel perfectly fine walking around Lake Merritt and to and from the Legionnaire. It’s still a really wonderful city, and there’s a lot going on here with a lot of heart, a lot of life, and I wanted to celebrate that.”
One of the tournament’s fun wrinkles is that each round is themed. For the night we attended, the “superheroes” theme required each group to interpret the prompt. Some took it to mean that power ballads were on the menu of songs. Others dressed as contemporary video game or comic book heroes, while others took a more classical route, looking to Greek mythology. All KaraOakland participants are encouraged to dress up, build elaborate dance numbers, and engage with the crowd in ostentatious ways.
On Monday, The Legionnaire Home Team performed songs from the Disney animated classic Hercules and wore Greek costumes, ending each performance with a circle chant from another movie, Eddie Murphy’s hilarious “Hercules!” expression from The Nutty Professor. Another team wore and gave out fake press passes as a nod to the journalistic adventures of Peter Parker—Spiderman—and Clark Kent—Superman. But that was just the beginning.
How the madness began
For White, a 38-year-old Oakland resident and tech content marketer, the tournament has been a labor of love.
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Having previously participated in or heard about similar leagues in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., White thought a league in Oakland could be unique because of its reputation as a haven for artists. White was also interested in starting a league because of her background in sports, but she wanted to get into something with less wear and tear. And she loved pretending to be a pop star. So this past December, she emailed Jason Lujick, the general manager of the Legionnaire, to ask if they’d consider hosting a league with a performance once a week.
Lujick, who hosts karaoke every night and invested in one of the city’s best audio systems and largest song catalogs, said he was into it.
“I really like the organization, creative direction, and [putting in] a lot of work, like with any other sport, with teams showing up regularly to practice,” White said. Participants said they put in between 12 to 20 hours a week on the three numbers they perform at each week’s competition.
By mid-January, White had built a website for people to register, started hanging posters in shops, and shared tournament links to local groups online. Darrel Thigpen, a well-known drag performer, learned about it from a poster at a donut shop, and a roller derby player saw a social media post and excitedly recruited friends to make a group.
“Within a few weeks, all slots were full. There was a big appetite for it. People really wanted to sing in a competitive team-based karaoke league,” White said.
Several singers signed up individually, and White, seeking to connect strangers, set up two preseason events for established teams to add new members. As the season got closer, she used her tech background to create an Airtable containing contestant data to add people to the final groups. Based on their submitted home locations around Oakland and their singing experience, White mixed serious performers like Thigpen with raw talents. This meant people had to quickly learn how to sing together. But it also led to fast friendships.
White’s experience in other karaoke leagues also led her to think hard about event logistics, including the length of each competition round and the size of the teams. For example, she wanted at least five people per team because she’d seen people flake out or get sick in San Francisco, leading to overburdened singers and repetitive song choices. And since she wanted the competition to be a true spectator sport, with a warmup, expected scoring breaks and updates, and a set time of about two hours a night, she set limits on the number of performances, with five songs per round and one song per team.
Finally, White set up each night to end in an exciting crescendo by limiting the number of performers in the first two rounds to solos, duets, and trios, then expanding into a chaotic, room-shaking group number for the finale.
For this past Monday’s event, the group numbers included versions of classic belting songs like “Holding Out for a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler, with team members jumping and striding into all corners of the bar, dancing with barkeeps, and, at some point, people losing their shirts.
Picking winners the same way Oakland voters choose the mayor
Once White decided how long the performances would be on tournament nights and how many rounds there would be, she made the league long enough to allow for each team to have the opportunity to be competitive throughout, even if they fell behind in wins. This meant that at the end of the season—this first one has lasted seven weeks—there were a total of 21 wins to be had with one win per round. The top two winners, at that point, go to a one-night playoff final.
Then, White had to determine the fairest way for people to vote on the performances. After her uncle suggested ranked-choice, White thought it made sense because it would lead to a winner through a broader consensus. As in other instances of ranked-choice voting, people are asked to rank each performance from their favorite to least favorite.
“The theory was teams would all put themselves first, but the second and third choices would uncover the very best of the night. I think for the most part that happened, although teams ended up voting strategically [by down-ranking some of the best teams], resulting in some surprising wins,” she said.
Tad Milbourne, the founder of RankedVote, a plug-and-play ranked-choice software company, explained to her how to incorporate it into her plans for a live website. Ranked Vote has run ranked-choice contests for everything from swimming competitions to management elections.
Once in the system, White was thrilled it would help people learn about this type of voting and encourage direct engagement with the performers.
The city of Oakland also uses ranked-choice voting for its elections to pick the mayor, members of the City Council and OUSD school board, city attorney, and city auditor.
“I like that it has an educational element built in. As you’re going through the process of voting, you’re watching each round’s rank choices in the app’s animation, and through eliminations, you can visually see how many votes everybody starts with and how they are [subsequently] distributed,” she said.
White manages the app by inputting the song choices the day before a competition when the teams send them in. The app processes the votes automatically. All the voters have to do is go to the voting page on the KaraOakland website—only people who are physically at the bar during a performance are allowed to vote on it—and drag and drop their choices into place, as seen in the video below.
If a team gets over 50% of the votes after the first choices are counted, that team wins the round outright. But if no team has a majority, the worst-performing team is eliminated and the second-ranked choices on ballots are distributed to the teams. The process continues until one team gets over 50% of the vote.
Tourney attendees are told to consider each team’s overall performance when voting. But just like voters in political contests, some may vote based on narrower criteria. Some people on Monday said they voted for their favorite vocal performance, others for the overall energy the team brought, and some simply for their friends.
White says she’s thinking about tweaking some rules for future seasons to make the tournament more competitive. She might give out points, or half points, for teams coming in second or third. Another possible change could be requiring each team to have exactly the same number of members when they perform. Because some teams had more people than others this season, and singers were allowed to vote for themselves, the bigger teams had a voting advantage most nights.
Ultimately, just like with a political election, the contest winner is determined by popularity. Teams have a big incentive to bring friends to the bar and convince them to vote.
“Crowd-building is a very viable and legitimate strategy. The Green Fingers team did that one week when they brought in 17 people. That’s enough to sway the results even if you’re doing ranked-choice voting,” White said. “Some people love ranked choice voting and some don’t. It highlights that there’s no perfect system for judging competitive karaoke.”
Most contestants we talked to said they didn’t mind the ranking system. Thigpen said they’re not a big fan of it, even if they’ve tied for the most wins. The strategy of down-ranking rankled them a bit.
“As things now for me are becoming political, it’s a little less fun,” they said.
Green Fingers, AABAA, Legionnaire Home Team, Purple Haze, Vulnerable Journeys
The five teams competing this season reflect Oakland’s diversity.
The Green Fingers are led by Thigpen and include Gina Yap, an accountant, Joe Belson, a bassist and composer, and Elle Black, a Black Queer educator.
Thigpen, a front desk clerk at a senior living facility in Oakland by day and a drag performer by night, told us they’d been singing karaoke since they were 15 years old growing up in St. Louis, Missouri. Their mother used to take them to restaurants and bars to perform. Thigpen said joining KaraOakland has encouraged them to consider incorporating actual singing into their drag act rather than lip-syncing. And the competitive aspect also hasn’t hurt.
“Bragging rights from winning is fun. I didn’t know what the prize was gonna be for winning the tournament until like two weeks ago, but I think I was more interested in the experience for myself as a performer, getting out there doing different things and meeting people,” Thigpen said.
When they performed at the preseason sessions in February, belting out a showstopping version of “At Last” by Etta James, other people scrambled to get on the same team as Thigpen. That placed them into a leadership position that led to the team meeting every week at karaoke bars around Oakland to practice and talk about song strategy, costumes, and dancing routines. Thigpen said they came up with an exciting routine for a performance of Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” based on their experience as a high school cheerleader.
“We also did a Britney Spears reenactment of her circus song. So of course I had two dancers and I was the ringleader surrounded by a juggler, a fortune teller, and a mime clown. It was hilarious,” they said.
The Purple Haze team came together at the last minute, adding players throughout the season. Bar patrons told us they’ve been awesome on stage. Sarah Crowe, the team captain, told The Oaklandside that singing is her “number one passion in her entire life” and that she can sing 900 songs from memory. Her dad was a blues harmonica player with a giant record collection.
Even though she didn’t know her team members before the competition, Crowe said they’ve all come to love each other. They gathered at her house to practice, including last week, when to learn about each other’s strengths and styles, they sang their favorite songs.
“That was a really special experience to sing our favorite genre, our wheelhouse, because the karaoke league’s themes every week push you outside of your boundaries, your usual repertoire of songs,” she said.
The team’s favorite performance was a version of the Barbie movie song “I’m Just Ken,” for the “Bro” themed week, with each member dressing up like the characters from the movie.
“I think all of us are having the most fun that we’ve ever had in our lives, especially because we’re kind of the underdog team with only one win under our belt and it was for Ken,” she said.
The Legionnaire Home Team, a consistent performer made up of bar regulars, provided the competition’s biggest shock this week. Owning two wins going into the last regular season night, the group of eight swept all three rounds with versions of songs from the Disney movie “Hercules,” tying the Vulnerable Journeys team and then defeating them in a sudden death one-song sing-off. With great choreography and maybe the highest energy of any team, the bar became a mini-Herc lovefest in downtown Oakland for two hours.
Kevin Ligon, a fire protection specialist who recently moved from Reno, said the team used Spotify to narrow down ideas for songs. He’s also experienced an unexpected boost in friendships and mental health by taking part in the tournament, he said. In Reno, the tourism industry made people stick to their own, making it hard to make friends. But in Oakland through this event, it’s been all smiles, he said.
“It’s easy to talk to people. Everybody’s open, willing to let conversations grow farther than they’re used to,” Ligon said. “Music is the one weapon we have regardless if there’s a language barrier. Everybody understands it. I have my sad guy nights and I get up there and sing a sad song, or a party song, and since music is paired with emotion, it helps get through stuff.”
Two teams will battle it out next week in KaraOakland’s first season finale
In the championship match next Monday, the Legionnaire Home Team will face Green Fingers for a small award taken from the $30 individual entry fee. The rest of the money raised—10% of the bar proceeds from the entire tournament—go to Elevate Oakland, which serves OUSD schools that have lost funding for choral and other vocal performance education.
“We care about Oakland and giving kids the outlet to learn about music and find their voice is important,” White said.
Natalie Cassidy, the program manager for Elevate, which was started by Oakland artists like Sheila E., told us the support is wonderful.
“It’s a fairly substantial amount that will help support a couple of hours or sessions of teaching artists’ instruction for our students. So it’s definitely worth it,” Cassidy said. Elevate works with local artists like Kev Choice to create music curricula or to provide teaching support for existing curriculums at Oakland schools.
White said people should expect the tournament finals to be especially competitive and appropriately ridiculous. The teams will be expected to eat a “very, very, very, spicy taco” and then try to sing a song. They’ll also be asked to perform a round of dueling duets. The other teams will also participate with special themes of their own, including a parody song round and a Saturday morning cartoon round.
White hopes the tournament will grow and make even more people excited about building community in Oakland. She said registration for the fall season is open and will start sometime in August.
Green Finger’s Thigpen said the most important thing White has done is create an event people love.
“There is a fan base for karaoke all over the Bay Area,” they said. “But making it into a contest with themes and everything has been brilliant.”
JOSE FERMOSO
Jose Fermoso covers road safety, transportation, and public health for The Oaklandside. His previous work covering tech and culture has appeared in publications including The Guardian, The New York Times, and One Zero. Jose was born and raised in Oakland and is the host and creator of the El Progreso podcast, a new show featuring in-depth narrative stories and interviews about and from the perspective of the Latinx community.More by Jose Fermoso
