In this blog, you will find all you need to know about the Complaints Choirs, a project founded by Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen in 2005. These are temporary, community-based choirs that come together to create and perform a song about their individual and collective complaints.
The Choir Project
Inspired by Complaints Choir of Cairo, this project was born in May 2010 in Egypt to invite people from a range of backgrounds to create a song in a week-long workshop, based on their hopes and concerns, thoughts and feelings, and jokes and woes. Similar to the Complaints Choirs, the workshop consists of writing lyrics, except it also involves communal improvisation and composition, rather than the responsibility for composition resting mainly on one person's shoulders. Unique results occur every time; the only constant is the collaboration of the community in active participation in order to express themselves, with no prejudice towards anyone in the choir. The choir provides a short performance of their song at the end of the week of workshopping, and one performed at the Music Freedom Day in March 2011.