[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYKtwXaUxeU&feature=related[/youtube]A complaints choir rehearsed in Japan before its performance at the Mori Art Museum last month. The group’s litany of grievances focused on work more than those of choirs in other places.

As Ko Sasaki reports in The New York Times : Recently a group of about 100 Tokyo residents put their complaints into a pile and a composer, Okuchi Shunsuke, turned them into a song. About 80 of the complainers (accompanied by an accordion, a bass cello and a tambourine) then performed the composition at various sites around the city, becoming the latest example of what has become known as a complaints choir.

The idea started in Finland, where there is a word for people who complain simultaneously, valituskuoro, which translates as complaints choir. About six years ago Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen and his wife, Tellervo Kalleinen, both visual artists living in Helsinki, began discussing the possibility of turning this metaphorical concept into something quite literal. People spend so much energy complaining, they reasoned, so why not harness all that energy into something positive?

In 2005, with help from arts-related organizations in England and Finland, the two organized their first complaints choir, in Birmingham, England.

For more information on complaint choirs, see http://www.complaintschoir.org/choirs.html