Complaints Choir Complains!

We, the Toronto Complaints Choir, took our show on the road today. First stop, St. Lawrence Market, to entertain the unsuspecting noon hour lunch crowd.  We certainly complained, and, I hope, entertained. It sure looked like it. A look of recognition seemed to resonate through the crowd as we rattled off complaints, one by one (melodically, of course), By the last stanza, spontaneous  sing-alongs were in evidence.

For those of you who may not have read a previous blog I wrote about Complaints Choirs around the world, I’ll give you a brief rundown now.

The concept was developed in Finland by two musicians who thought it would be fun to transform the huge energy people put into complaining and turn it into something fun and creative.

In the Finnish vocabulary there is an expression "Valituskuoro," meaning "Complaints Choir" and it is used to describe situations where a lot of people are complaining simultaneously?

The musicians thought, "Wouldn´t it be fantastic to take this expression literally and organise a real Complaints Choir!" And they did. They solicited complaints (about anything people wanted to complain about), put them to music, solicited choir members, rehearsed and held spontaneous performances in public places throughout the city.

Their success in Helsinki prompted the organizers to encourage other major cities in the world to do the same. This winter, a Complaints Choir was formed in Toronto through the World Stage Theatre at Harbourfront. After receiving more than 1000 complaints from Torontonians, a composer was hired to take The People’s Fodder and turn it into something musical.

Local musician Bryce Kulak rose to the challenge and composed a delightful, fun, and charmingly melodic song, squeezing in as many complaints as he could. People like me (non-professional complainers!) signed up, and after weeks of rehearsals, the first performance was belted out today in front of Future Bakery at St. Lawrence Market.

The audience? Whoever was in the vicinity at the time. Noon-day lunchers, strolling shoppers pushing bundle buggies, peameal-bacon-eating children and wandering souls taking sushi and fried veal sandwiches back to the office.

There were about 50 or so of us in the choir today, our musical accompanists, and our fearless leader, Bryce, directing us from a podium set up in an aisle between coolers of raw meat and bakery shelves filled with plump ryes breads and oozing butter tarts.

Bryce created something akin to a Broadway musical hit song. It was so catchy, that by the end of the seventh (and last) stanza of the song, I saw dozens of people singing along with us. Smart move on the organizers’ part to hand out song sheets to the crowd. It was particularly smart because the cavernous market place seemed to suck up a lot of our sound. In such conditions, it’s hard for people to make out the words. And though the melody we sang is so compelling, it’s the words, aka the complaints, that make the song so special.

So what did we complain about?  You name it.

How I wish you could hear the lines sung, as they should be, rather than read. Well, you can. The video is near-perfect for a singalong. So let me give you some  idea of what Torontonians have to complain about, and did. We’ll be complaining again tomorrow after 6:00 at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Here are some excerpts.

Nobody signals in their cars

No good 30s singles’ bars

Why do the Maple Leafs always lose?

I hate getting tiny rocks in my shoes.

Stickers on pears pull the skin right off

Please use your sleeve when you sneeze and cough

Please stop hogging that subway pole

I wish I didn’t have this unsightly mole.

The TTC is not o great

Crowded, expensive, and always late

Where are all the bicycle routes?

Upstairs neighbors walk in boots.

Where are the attractive single men?

Bugs are invading my house again

We are people not sardines,

Not everything is about you, teens!

Why don’t my children ever call

They take all my money and spend it at the mall

Why should I cook for you every night

When washing the \dishes is such a fight?

Toronto’s G-20 was a police state

I can’t get laid and I can’t get a date

Why can’t artists make a buck

Standing ovations for shows that such

Double –wide strollers are in my way

Too timid to say what I have to say

Nobody cares about your status updates

Nathan Phillips Square should sharpen their skates.

Each of these stanzas are punctuated with a rousing chorus where we harmonically repeat a decisive and common rant, including Rob Ford (Rob Ford, Rob Ford, Rob Ford),  Litterbugs, etc., Escalator Blockers, Dog Poo and Pee on the Seat.

I’ve greatly enjoyed being part of the choir and watching the creative process take shape. Bryce (and the organizers) did a fabulous job taking 1000 raw complaints and turning them into something fun and so very creative.

In a world filled with so much turmoil, from the earthquake and nuclear breakddown in Japan, the mess in Libya, and, closer to home, yesterday’s murder of a developmentally handicapped 80 year-old, it’s hard to take ourselves too seriously. Fortunately, we don’t. By playing with these complaints, we acknowledge they’re real, universal and deserve mentioning. Complaining feels good some times. It’s a nice outlet. We all need it.

And as the Complaints Choir’s fearless leader, librettist, composer and seemingly all around good-guy has written:

Complaining!

There isn’t anything wrong about it

Should be a complaining song about it

I hope you’ll all sing along about it

It’s time to finally shout about it.

Complain! Complain! Complain! Complain!

But not too much, okay?  It can get pretty boring after awhile.

Complaints, Catharsis and a Toronto Choir

How lucky can I get? I get to complain and call it art.

I've found a way to get through this harsh Toronto winter by joining a Complaints Choir, a concept developed  by Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen in Helsinki. Perhaps it was due to the coldness of the day that they ended up discussing the possibility of transforming the huge energy people put into complaining into something else. Perhaps not directly into heat – but into something powerful, anyway.

In the Finnish vocabulary there is an expression "Valituskuoro". It means "Complaints Choir" and it is used to describe situations where a lot of people are complaining simultaneously. What a nice way of referring to what other people might refer to as a bunch of whiners, no?

Kalleinen and Kochta-Kalleinen thought: "Wouldn´t it be fantastic to take this expression literally and organise a real Complaints Choir!" They did, and it’s come to Toronto at the Harbourfront Centre. Though I can't sing, I signed up the second I heard about it. I do know how to complain.

As complaining is a universal phenomenon, Kalleinen and Kockta-Kalleinen thought the project could be organised in any city around the world. They offered the concept to different events where they were invited as artists – but it was only after Springhill Institute in Birmingham, England, got excited about the idea that the First Complaints Choir became a reality.

Birmingham (to some known as the "arsehole of England") was a perfect place to start the project. The participants – found through flyers and small posters – understood the concept instinctively.  Local musician Mike Hurley turned the complaints into a easy to learn song. Within two weeks time the song was rehearsed to perfection by the committed participants – despite the fact that only few were able to sing. A hit was born – with a chorus you can't get out of your mind: "I want my money back..."

The Complaints Choir concept was a success, so much so that Kalleinen and Kochta-Kalleinen were invited to initiate complaints choirs all around the globe – Hong Kong, Philadelphia, Gothenburg, Buenos Aires Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, Chicago, Singapore, Copenhagen and Tokyo.  http://www.complaintschoir.org/choirs.html

The choirs were such a success, other cities were encouraged to follow the Finnish prototype and set up their own Complaints Choirs. http://www.complaintschoir.org/news.html

Toronto has joined in. We now have our own Complaints Choir.

I went to my first meeting last month at Harbourfront Centre, and will be heading out to my next soon. All you had to do to become a member of the choir was send in your complaint to a Hotline. I did, and rattled off one of my pet peeves, about young people on our subway system, so plugged in to their iPods, that they never look up long enough to notice much older people standing and in need of a seat.

It was good enough to get me picked for the choir (though I think everyone who sent in a complaint was, in fact, invited).  At our first meeting, we received a sheet of all the complaints, lumped into categories, everything from the weather to local politicians. 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. 

Fortunately, the choir is open to people of all ages and no singing experience is required. I figure I can lip-synch in a crowd, which is exactly what I’ll be doing. A musician has been hired to compile the best-of complaints and create an original, humorous but poignant song which the 100 plus people in the choir will learn and perform around the city in a flash mob (or two) in public spaces.

Though the originators of the Complaints Choir concept are still involved peripherally in the concept, they are no longer directly involved.  “I think we have listened to enough complaints,” Mr. Kochta-Kalleinen has said. I can only imagine.

The originators of the Complaints Choir want the choirs to continue though, and on their Web site is a nine-step process http://www.complaintschoir.org/doityourself.html for forming a choir, which includes inviting people to complain, finding the right composer, planning a performance (“spontaneous” unpublicized public performances at places like train stations are highly encouraged) and compiling a video. They also intend to be a resource for people who want to start their own choirs, and then to post videos of their performances.

At our first meeting last month, we warmed up our vocal chords and winnowed down the massive number of complaints sent in (both humourous and serious) to a usable sum. A composer was asked to come back to our next meeting with a composition that we will be rehearsing for the next couple weeks until we take it out into the (anxiously waiting) world in the form of flash mobs.

I’m really looking forward to our first real rehearsal, even more to our performances.

Until I report back with further details, please remember: Your call is very important to us.

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