Worldwide craze: complaint choirs.
Helsinki residents Tellervo Kalleinen and her husband Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen were walking one wintry day, complaining about the cold. Tellervo pointed out that in the Finnish language "Valituskuoro" means "Complaints Choir" and describes situations where a lot of people are complaining simultaneously. They decided to organise a real Complaints Choir!
The project began in 2005 and has spread across the world. Below, find out about complaints choirs and maybe you'll be inspired to start your own. I'm starting one my town! See Complaints Choir, Durham-Chapel Hill Headquarters.
Anybody can sing in a complaint choir. Non-singers can sing. Enthusiasm is paramount. Jump right in!
The project began in 2005 and has spread across the world. Below, find out about complaints choirs and maybe you'll be inspired to start your own. I'm starting one my town! See Complaints Choir, Durham-Chapel Hill Headquarters.
Anybody can sing in a complaint choir. Non-singers can sing. Enthusiasm is paramount. Jump right in!
In 2010, Glenn Mehrbach and I made the Durham Chapel Hill Complaints Choir
I think the song he wrote is one of the best complaints choir songs.
We had a bit of trouble getting this video together - it's hard to synch the sound and the picture. But if you want to see a lot of the back of my head, take a look!
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Lyrics from the Singapore Complaint Choir
The Singapore Complaints Choir was forbidden to perform in public as there were Malaysians among them and that's prohibited.
The Complaints Choir Singapore.We get fined for almost anything
Drivers won't give chance when you want to change lane
The indoors are cold, the outdoors are hot;
And the humid air, it wrecks my hair
Those answering machines always make you hold
Only to hang up on you
When a pregnant lady gets on the train
Everyone pretends to be asleep
I'm stuck with my parents till I'm 35
We don't recycle any plastic bags
*chorus:
What's wrong with Singapore?
Losing always makes me feel so sore
Cause if you're not the best
Then you're just one of the rest
My oh my Singapore
What exactly are we voting for?
What's not expressly permitted
is prohibited
"Ooh"
When I'm hungry at the food court, I see
People chope seats with their tissue paper
To the auntie staying upstairs:
Your laundry's dripping on my bed sheets
Please don't squat on the toilet seats
And don't clip your nails on MRT
Stray cats get into noisy affairs
At night my neighbor makes weird animal sounds
People put on fake accents to sound posh
And queue up 3 hours for donuts
Singaporeans too kiasu! (so scared to lose)
Singaporeans too kiasi! (so scared to die)
Singaporeans too kiabor! (scared of their wives)
Maybe we're just too stressed out! (even the kids)
Singapore's national bird is the crane (the one with yellow steel girders)
Real estate agents' leaflets clogging up my mailbox (en bloc, en bloc, en bloc, en bloc)
Why can't we be buried when we die?
No one wants to climb Bukit Timah with me
*chorus
There are not enough public holidays
My neighbor sings all night
Wedding dinners never start on time
My hair is always cut shorter than I want
Channel 5 commercials are way too long
Why do men turn bald?
We have to pay for tap water at restaurants
All the bus stops have tilted benches
We cannot access playboy.com
Complaint choir of Wroclaw
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Trailer from "Complaints Choir - a documentary film"
"I should have a real job. I should be in a real movie."
You can see details about the Complaints Choir - a documentary film at the Complaints Choir website. As of today (December 1 2010), for a limited time, the whole movie is available for viewing online, streaming, at the OneWorld-berlin website.
Moaners of all nations, unite in song!
"What are you complaining about? This is the question two Finnish artists have asked in all four corners of the world in documentary director Ada Bligaard Søby's docu-musical. Their aim is not to pour salt in the wounds of the world's grumpy complainers, but to let everyone vent their dissatisfaction about everything from parking fines to climate change in a liberating chorus of whining harmonies.
"We are taken to places such as Chicago and Singapore, and even if the cultures vary, it's obvious that complaining is a basic human trait, and it is tackled with a deadpan approach by the two Finns." Director: Ada Bligaard Søby, Danmark 2009, 56 min.
Moaners of all nations, unite in song!
"What are you complaining about? This is the question two Finnish artists have asked in all four corners of the world in documentary director Ada Bligaard Søby's docu-musical. Their aim is not to pour salt in the wounds of the world's grumpy complainers, but to let everyone vent their dissatisfaction about everything from parking fines to climate change in a liberating chorus of whining harmonies.
"We are taken to places such as Chicago and Singapore, and even if the cultures vary, it's obvious that complaining is a basic human trait, and it is tackled with a deadpan approach by the two Finns." Director: Ada Bligaard Søby, Danmark 2009, 56 min.
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From Kalleinen & Kochta-Kalleinen's complaints choir website:
After the Complaints Choir of Birmingham became a surprise success the founders were invited to initiate complaints choirs all around the globe. They facilitated Complaints Choir workshops in Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, Chicago, Singapore and Copenhagen.Since the success of the Brimingham Complaints Choir on YouTube they have been receiving numerous letters where people describe how exactly in Hong Kong, Philadelphia, Gothenburg, or Buenos Aires people complain perhaps more than anywhere else in the world and therefore need an own complaints choir.
They have documented all the performances and they are presenting the videos as a powerful video installation in art exhibitions as well as in this web site.
The limited capacity of Kalleinen & Kochta-Kalleinen to fulfil the apparent big need for complaints choirs worldwide have led them to open this web site and encourage people to form their own complaints choir
The Chicago Complaints Choir
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Complaints choirs of Birmingham, Copenhagen, Philadelphia, Sundyberg, Vancouver, and Budoe
How to start your own complaints choir (from the official website)
If you plan to organize a Complaints Choir in your town, please contact kochta@nexgo.de - they can announce your plan on the Complaints Choir International Website. Please credit them and link to their site.Here's how to organize a complaints choir in 9 easy steps:
- Invite people from your city to join the complaints choir. Distribute flyers, spread posters and write a press release. Everybody can join, no singing skills required! The more diverse the participants the better. From pensioner to teenager, everybody has something to complain about. The people that sign up for the choir send in their complaints before the first meeting.
- Find the Right Composer (and accompanists): The musician has a difficult task. He or she has to work very fast; the song has to be composed within a few days and can be changed all the time during the rehearsals. The musician is also the choir conductor and leads the rehearsals. He or she has to be good in working with amateurs and total non-singers to make them enthusiastic and sing out loud with proudness. It does not matter how you sing, if you sing loud – thats the right attitude.
- Group the Complaints that were submitted into apropriate categories, for example: complaints about the city, about neighbours, about technology, about life in general, about things that can't be changed etc. and print them on separate papers.
- The First Choir Meeting: Making the Lyrics
Start with a warm-up complaining session. Thats why people are here for. There might come up very good extra material for the song. Introduce the categories you have choosen and read the best complaints from each category to the choir. Ask the people to choose any of the categories they feel most excited about. The choir now divides into small "expert teams" that go through all the complaints within their favourite category and edit them, combine them, reformulate them.
The results of each team are glued to cardboard. At the rehearsal's end every team reads their suggestions to the other teams.
- Making the Song: The musicians and a few volunteers from the choir combine the ideas of the expert teams and finalize the lyrics. The musician fits the song and the lyrics together.
- Rehearsing: Now it's time to start singing. During the rehearsals new ideas pop up that should be instantly integrated into the song. It's good to make everybody loose their shyness and sing out loud. About 3 to 5 rehearsals are sufficient to learn the song, this shouldn't be such hard work!
At the end of each rehearsal food and drinks should be served.
- Preparing the Grand Performance: Together with the choir you should decide on the locations of your performances. For some locations you can make an announcement and invite your audience, but it is also fun to surprise people with an spontaneous appearances in public places. You should also consider the audio recording of the song in a quiet place. Be sure that you have enough video cameras filming your performances for making the video later on.
- Go out and Sing your Complaints: Now the hard work is done, you just can enjoy complaining. If you have many performances on the same day think about food – hungry complainers won't sing well.
Complaint choirs of Budapest, Chicago, Florence, Gabriola, Hamburg and Helsinki
Complaint choirs of Jerusalem, Juneau, Melbourne, Singapore, Sointula, and St. Petersburg
Complaints choir of Ljubljana
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Here's an off-the-cuff really spontaneous choir
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Complaints Choirs all over the world
- Complaints Choirs of the World
- Here you can find information about all complaints choirs that have been initiated around the world. You can also submit information about an upcoming choir, find fellow complainers and vote for your favourite complaints choir.
- Complaints Choir of Tokio
- Tonight the Tokyo Complaints Choir had its premiere ... It was a remarkable day, it was Friday the 13th, Obama was visiting Japan, and it was bloody cold and rainy.
In fact the weather was very suitable for the premiere of the Complaints Choir. In all other cities that we (Tellervo and Oliver) were involved in the Complaints Choir the weather was always perfect on the day of our outdoor performances. Since in many songs we had complaints about lousy weather, we lost kind of credibility when the sun was shining bright during perfromance. In Tokyo this issue was now solved... - Chorus of disapproval: the complaints choir - Times Online
- There are choirs who sing fugues on the theme of "food has no taste any more" and yodel to "I can't stop thinking about sex". They chant about tatty bus stops and harmonise on the insufficient length of their vacuum-cleaner cord. In fact, every tedious aspect of modern life has probably passed the lips of a complaints choir, a new kind of performance art that is noisily taking root across the world....
- Complaints Choirs Worldwide | PRI's The World
- ... The gripes - like the quality of the singing voices -- varied wildly, from shoddy town planning to too expensive beer... You can't get rich by working...and love doesn't last forever.
"We had thought that the maximum number of complaints we can just handle in a workshop is like 40 or something - then we just started to get in more and more people and finally we had 90 people, and of course it was our principle not to say no for anybody...
"We always lose to Sweden in hockey and the Eurovision Song contest" they sing. They continue, "why does no-one agree with me and why does Tram number 3 smell of pee?"
There are complaints about saunas. And there are complaints about the weather, men who snore, women who complain, TV, the dentist, sex lives - or a lack of them, and reference numbers - they're too long... - Turning Complaints Into Art (New York Times)
- Life in Tokyo, as everywhere else in the world, is annoying and unfair. The good men are all married. Co-workers clip their fingernails at their desks. Laundry comes back from the cleaners still dirty. Society is too competitive. It is impossible to get enough sleep...
- New York Music - The NYC Chapter of the Complaints Choir is Here - page 1
- Licht and Nasdor started with over 600 complaints covering doctors, cabbies, mass transit, and the media-surprisingly, Licht says, there were few about politics- submitted online and by choir members at the initial, pre-rehearsal meeting. Entries were pared down as Licht developed phrasing and cadence, during which he decided on a '50s rock 'n' roll feel: "The music, like Dion and the Belmonts, the Brill Building-that's real New York."
- Complaints Choir, a documentary film | Facebook
- Welcome to the official Facebook Page of Complaints Choir, a documentary film. Get exclusive content and interact with Complaints Choir, a documentary film, right from Facebook.
- Complaints Choirs | PRI's The World
- ... Kalleinen couldn't resist [starting a Singapore chapter]. Before they travelled to Singapore, Kalleinen and her husband received an email from the government containing some guidelines. Guidelines for complaining: no promotion of non-mainstream lifestyle, whatever that is. And no complaining about "generally accepted community standards," whatever they are.
"I don't know, we had quite much fun reading this email and we just had to answer them that 'sorry, but if you invite complaints choir project to Singapore, then you just have to live with the project and live with the principles.' " ...
And so far, so good. The couple have assembled a choir who have offered up plenty of complaints. Among them, "I hate foreigners who think Singapore is part of China...I get rashes from MSG..." and then more controversially: "Whatever is not expressly permitted is prohibited." The complaints choir of Singapore is currently awaiting a performing licence from the government.
Some of my songbook lenses
Some of my music lenses...
What do you think? What complaint would contribute?
I am really thinking about doing one of these choirs - maybe I'll use yours!
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Spook
Dec 1, 2010 @ 7:29 am | delete
- Blimey, now I have seen everything. Out with politicians once and for all as we don't mind losing our own money. Merry Xmas. Blessed by an Angel.
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resabi Sep 11, 2010 @ 10:51 am | delete
- This lens is hilarious. LOVE this concept. My chief complain is the idiotic No Child Left Behind law that in reality is the Nobody Moves Forward law, since the effort to have everyone catch up results in those in the forefront having to stand still Ok. I won't start the diatribe here, but that's a big complaint of mine!
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AddaptAbilities Jan 17, 2010 @ 1:08 am | delete
- Well, let's see ... PG&E (the local utility) is doing construction outside my house, starting their jackhammers at 7 a.m. ... and they've been at it for a month, and though they were supposed to be done this weekend, they've put up new signs saying they'll be at it for another month ... and they've taken up all the parking spaces in the neighborhood ... I also got a parking ticket for a place I wasn't even parked ... and another ticket for making an illegal left turn ...
If San Francisco ever has a Complaints Choir, it will will be all about DPT.
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luvmyludwig
Jan 7, 2010 @ 8:00 am | delete
- This was a fun lens to read. I love the spontaneous chior!
My complaint, a mom complaint "The kids won't clean their room!"
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