Values, Ideals, and Political Involvement

Though the concept helps to represent people by making their private problems public, it is important that people aren't labelled as representative of particular groups such as age or class, or made to feel stereotyped; each person is an individual representing themselves. Effort was taken by the Kalleinens to ensure that invitations to their choirs were distributed across a range of neighbourhoods and media, so that they could get as mixed a group as possible and get people to interact with others they wouldn't have otherwise met. The inclusion of eating food in the steps to create your own choir is there as an additional way to invest in the community experience created by the choir, especially since there is such a lot of work to do in a limited time frame. Usually the choirs were diverse, though after taking the project worldwide, the founders saw some general trends regarding types of people that took part: often more women than men would join, aged between 40-60, as well as more educated people interested in culture. 

Complaints Choir of Helsinki organising complaints.

Hong Kong roadside exhibition to collect complaints from the public.

Leading on from this, it is seen as especially important that any complaints choir is approached with an empathetic and non-judgemental attitude. Every complaint should be taken seriously, whether big or small. This creates a solidarity and a better understanding of different points of view, and when someone in the choir doesn't agree with a particular complaint, everyone will be singing their complaint too, which creates a powerful effect even if other people don't care about it. It also helps to put things in perspective and provide the sense of humour mentioned above; it is possible to care about small things as well as global injustice, and okay to do so, especially since those things that are closer to home form part of our identities. Equally, complaining about the bigger things alongside the smaller things can help people feel better about the smaller things.

As can be seen here, only 7.5% of complaints in the first 8 Kalleinen choirs were politically related, and the founders have stated that the project is not intended to primarily be a form of political protest, unless a community wants to use it in that way (why should important issues such as broken underpants be ignored?!). The idea is to provide a free space where people can choose to address various issues. However, they have noted that personal complaints could still be interpreted as political, since they can imply the nature of a capitalist society (or otherwise), which would increase the above percentage. Additionally, the unfortunate situation in Singapore meant that the choir was banned from public performance and thus politics was more heavily involved, despite the few expressly political complaints in the song.