On a recent afternoon on the streets near City Hall, a cabdriver kvetched about commuters blocking intersections. An elderly man denounced the mayor and the governor for "working for organized crime." A 22-year-old city woman bellyached that she often detects that distinct "SEPTA smell" long before approaching the station entrances.
The Complaint Collectors wrote everything down, sometimes nodding sympathetically. Now they'll turn those miserable mumblings into melodious music.
Philadelphia is getting its first "Complaint Choir," a group of citizens who will come together to sing out gripes both universal and unique, from "I hate waiting for the train" to "I'm waiting to borrow my friend's car and she's two hours late"; from "I need a date" to "My roommate leaves wadded-up napkins around our apartment and it's gross."
"The concept is, if you can laugh at something and make art of it, it really makes it that much easier to deal with," said Shelley Spector of SPECTOR Projects, which is collaborating with First Person Arts on the project. "It's unifying, a bonding experience."
Anyone interested in performing - or simply grousing - is invited to the choir's first meeting tomorrow at 7 p.m. at the Gershman Y, 401 S. Broad St. The group will rehearse through October and perform one song, approximately seven minutes long, formally at the Painted Bride and informally on the streets of Philadelphia in November during the First Person Festival.
The original music is being written by Evan Solot, chairman of the composition department at the University of the Arts' School of Music. He's tentatively imagining a final song that's "mock classical," with a catchy chorus. He and Spector hope to present ideas for music and lyrics at tomorrow's meeting.
Two Finnish artists conceived of such a singing group while walking on a cold winter day in Helsinki and wondering what would happen if they could take all the energy people spent complaining and turn it into something else. (Heat was foremost in their minds at the time.) They took the idea to England and the first "Complaints Choir" opened in Birmingham in 2005. (Depending on the city and group, the word
complaint
is sometimes pluralized.)
"People like to complain and people like to sing. Why not do it at the same time?" Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, one of the creators, said in an e-mail. "In our eyes, the most amazing experience is for people . . . to start with a list of complaints, then go through a rehearsal process, then end with a grand performance in front of a large crowd. You start with individual complaints that are turned into a collective experience."
Kochta-Kalleinen and partner Tellervo Kalleinen created a template for starting a choir that they posted on their Web site,
» READ MORE: www.complaintschoir.org
. Since then, such groups have sprung up around the world, from Germany to Jerusalem, Pittsburgh to St. Petersburg. Many other places have expressed interest and sometimes vie for the title of "Complaints Capital" in e-mails to the Web site, said Kochta-Kalleinen, noting that Hungarians claim squawking superiority.
Spector saw videos of such choirs, ranging from 15 to more than 50 songsters, and felt inspired to bring the idea to Philadelphia. Although some gripes were very city- or country- specific - the Finns grumped that when they buy furniture, they get only planks of wood in a box, while the Brits groused that they live on cul-de-sacs - others had mass appeal.
"They're halfway around the world and they're saying these things I totally understand," she said. "They performed with earnest passion. They could have been praying or singing some 17th-century opera and here it was about toilet paper."
There's no doubt that Philadelphians have plenty to gripe about: taxes, traffic, dirty streets, and sports teams that haven't clinched a championship in a generation. Since Complaint Collectors have been out, certain themes have emerged, said Nick Forrest, First Person Arts' administrative coordinator. Among the themes: SEPTA is bad, bicyclists don't like car drivers and vice versa, and bringing a casino to the city is a poor idea. Of course, not every complaint will make the cut - there is, after all, only seven minutes, not seven days, of song to work with.
"A lot of people say, 'I've already registered,' " Forrest said, referring to the way people brush past him, assuming he's an election worker. "One person said, 'I'm sick of all these people standing around with clipboards.' "
Working near City Hall on a rainy day this month, Forrest and his fellow collectors found most people eager to rush past or at most complain about the weather.
Still, some seemed to relish the outlet. Two female coworkers with career complaints held onto a clipboard for 10 minutes, egging each other on to write more.
"Stupid supervisors who think they know it all, a cross between a donkey and a mule," one woman said as the other nodded, scribbled it down, and added, "Spineless. Sends everyone e-mails instead of telling them something to their face."
"This is therapy," the writer said. Both women declined to give their names, fearing reprisals on the job. "Although we hate it, we still need to keep it," one said with a laugh.
And maybe things aren't so bad in Philadelphia after all. More than one person said they had no complaints, and one man put it more precisely: "I'm happy. I'm breathing. I got love."