Complaints Choir Puts Global Gripes In Song

Everyone complains, but it sounds much better in song.

Looking at the complaints choirs from different cities, no country stands out as being more of a complainer than any other, but the quality of the complaints differs from nation to nation.

Oliver Kochta-Kallleinen , Norway

Date Posted: 03/25/07

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Let's face it: we all love to complain. It's too cold out; it's too hot out. I'm too tired; I can't fall asleep. What if you had the chance to get together with a group of people and write all your complaints down? What if you could sing out your complaints as part of an impromptu choir? You might have the opportunity: a complaints choir might be coming to a city near you.

My wife Tellervo and I came up with the idea to create a complaints choir during a winter day's walk. We were discussing complainers, and we realized that no matter what kind of circumstances people live in, no matter what kind of society and what quality of life, people will always complain and expend a lot of energy complaining. In the East they complained about the lack of choice, in the West about the abundance of choice. Even in Paradise people complained.

Would it be possible to transform just a tiny fraction of this energy? My wife is from Finland, and she remembered the old Finnish word "Valituskuoro," which means "Complaints Choir." An example of its use would be when a teacher gives a lot of homework and the students are upset and complaining about it, then the teacher would say "Oh, you're such a complaints choir." From that starting point, we decided it would be a good idea to take this concept of "Valituskuoro" literally and organize a real choir, with real people singing their complaints together.

Although the concept came quite spontaneously, we later realized that it had to do with the experiences we have had in the different countries we have lived in. I'm originally from East Germany. I lived there for nineteen years and then moved to West Germany i Hamburg i and lived there for ten years. Now I have been living in Finland for eight years. Of all the places I have lived in, Finland ranks highest in terms of education, least amount of corruption, et cetera, and yet I found that people here complain as much as in other places.