Okay with Karaoke?

The word is a portmanteau of shortened versions of the words for empty (kara) and orchestra (oke), creating karaoke, or “empty orchestra.”

The word existed in Japan before karaoke was a thing - back in the 1950s, there was some pay dispute that caused the musicians to boycott a theatre performance, leading to an empty orchestra pit. The show had to be performed with a machine playing recordings of the music, coining the term kara-oke, meaning the set up of playing pre-recorded music in lieu of an actual orchestra.

The karaoke machine was introduced in 1971, when Daisuke Inoue, a professional drummer/pianist in Kobe, figured out a way to offer instrumental tracks without a vocal. He did this, he said, at the request of many of his clients, who wanted to be able to sing along to his music even when he wasn’t performing.