about us

“Karaoke Sing Thing was created as a result of my seeing an amazing response to our setting up a morning for Karaoke at the Mall Of America® 14 years ago when I created the State Fish Art Contest as a way of teaching conservation education through art for kids around the country. It was our national expo for the Semi-Finalist in the contest at Mall Of America in June of 1997. We needed to fill in a morning of the three day event. Someone suggested Karaoke for anyone in the mall and our many guests from around the country. What transpired next was an amazing phenomenon. We had people from all walks in life and demographics come out of the audience and who were just visiting Mall Of America step up on stage to sing. They were young, older, women, men, and from every ethic and diverse group who was at the Mall that day. There was no way to put a demographic on them all. It was everybody. People were hanging over the balcony and on all of levels in the rotunda and everyone was clapping for whoever sang. I realized that people truly love to sing and that Karaoke is for everyone.

With that in mind, two years ago I began to put the Karaoke Sing Thing concept together and met with several people to get their opinions. What we have now is a long ways from the original idea. Having a chance to be discovered by singing in front of a lot of people at MOA for an exciting semi-final event and then actually having our winners singing at the fabulous Moondance Jammin Country and Moondance Rock Jam in Walker with real stars in country and rock took a lot of time and many contacts.  How fortunate we have been to find such incredible partners and Moondance Events and Mall Of America to make this event so big and exciting. The true icing on the cake was to make it not only fun and entertaining, but to make it Fund Raiser for a great cause. Thus, we created the pledge idea to help a great cause to support Special Olympics Minnesota. I am truly very proud of the team of partners and great KST Team we have assembled as we launch the inaugural KST. I think it will be fun, entertaining, do good in the community, and grow.”

Sal Di Leo, Founder