Dana Morrigan of Oakland is a KJ – a karaoke DJ. Which is different from being a DJ.
“A DJ is a curator and an arbiter of taste,” she writes by email. “A karaoke DJ, or KJ, is an emcee and a facilitator – the host and stage crew rolled into one.”
She had been a fixture at open mics for years before showing up to her favorite bar with a song ready to perform karaoke on – “Psycho Killer” by Talking Heads. She got hooked. She eventually began substituting as a KJ at a bar in San Francisco. Now she hosts private karaoke parties in the Bay Area, and weekly gigs at Ivy Room in Albany and monthly gigs at OMG in San Francisco (that one’s called Kinky Karaoke).
Her approach is to create a supportive atmosphere because she acknowledges that public singing can make people feel nervous or vulnerable. She stays out of the way to let the singer be the star, but will step in with a song of her own if there is a lull.
“A heartfelt performance is a beautiful thing, and it’s more likely to happen in a judgment-free space.”
That means no contests, no coercion, no judgements, no expectations.
She’s bringing her show to Carmel’s Unitarian Universalist Church, a family-friendly party with expletive-free versions of songs. Speaking of which, she’s bringing a lot of them, including, she says, old standards, the latest rock and R&B, country, hip-hop, punk, metal, jazz, musicals, blues singers and pop divas, songs in Spanish, Portuguese, German and French, thousands of obscure songs from the 1970s and ’80s.
It amounts to a rich soundtrack for aspiring rockstars.