Icelandic pop star Bjork led a three-day karaoke marathon that began last Thursday as part of a protest against the takeover of an energy firm that would effectively sell-off one of the country’s main natural resources. According to AFP, Bjork was joined by “the captain of the Icelandic handball team, a 70-year-old environmental campaigner and… the comedian-turned-mayor of Iceland’s capital Reykjavik.”
It’s not yet clear if the karaoke-fest will have an effect on the sale of the plant, but Bjork did manage to accumulate 20,000 signatures to a petition asking the government to consider revoking the takeover. Not bad for such a strange protest.
Bryan Farrell is a Waging Nonviolence co-founder and former editor. He produced the podcast, City of Refuge. His work has appeared in The Guardian, The Nation, Mother Jones, Slate, Grist and Earth Island Journal.
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There are various disputes about who first invented the name karaoke. One claim is that the karaoke styled machine was invented by Japanese musician Daisuke Inoue in Kobe, Japan, in 1971. After becoming popular in Japan, karaoke spread to East and Southeast Asia during the 1980s and subsequently to other parts of the world. Although the audio company Clarion was the first commercial producer of the machine they may have also invented the machine, but there is no existence of the patent.,;..’
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