Listening Recommendations: Complaints Choir

This week's listening recommendation isn't really a piece or work, but rather a type of choir.

This phenomenon came about on one cold wintry day in Helsinki, Finland. To the Finnish, the word, "Valituskuoro" is translated to "Complaints Choir", describing situations where a lot of people are complaining simultaneously. The founders of this movement, Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen had a brilliant idea, "Wouldn't it be fantastic to take this expression literally and organise a real Complaints Choir!"

The fundamentals were simple. Everyone knows how to complain, the question is can you sing while doing so :)

The first Complaints Choir was born in Birmingham, (known as "the arsehole of England" to some) with much support from the community who instinctively understood the idea (like many of us). It was a huge success, and the flare never died out. Kalleinen and Kochta-Kalleinen were invited to various parts of the globe to help initiate Complaints Choirs in places such as Helsinki, St. Petersburg and Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, while people in Budapest, Pittsburgh and even Jerusalem started their own versions of the Complaints Choir.

Our own adobe of Singapore has our own Singapore Complaints Choir which was supposed to perform at 2008's Fringe festival. What happened, however, quickly became public news, with much commentary from locals and foreigners alike. I won't dwell on it, but the Complaints Choir actually uploaded recordings onto Youtube, so lucky us haha.


Helsinki:



Budapest



Singapore:





You can view the lyrics here.