Tatte Complaint Choir

Complaining is unfashionable. It has never been fashionable and it is even less fashionable at the present as the ethos of hyper briskness and success reigns. Now changes are "opportunities", academics face the "pressures of opportunities" placed in front of them from the outside of the academy, and scholars are more exhausted from work than ever before.

Complainers are often thought as whiners for nothing. It would be more honourable to be silent about difficult matters. Yet, complaining is important. It is therapeutic for the complainers to have their say about what irritates, annoys or makes one angry. Complaining out loud cleans up the atmosphere in the workplace. Shared common experiences join complainers together. Furthermore, every complaint includes a sprout for resistance and change.

Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen collected the first complaint choir in Birmingham in 2005. After that, the complaint choir movement has spread around the world. However, no-one had made a complaint song of academics until Tatte decided to carry out its own complaint choir production. The premier of the academics' complaint choir was in the May Day party 2009 in Tampere, Finland.

In Tatte, we collected issues for complaints from the academics during the spring. And we received a lot of these, indeed! Joel Kuortti wrote the lyrics for the song trying to include all of the suggested issues. He could not manage it, and yet the original lyrics contained over 20 verses. Jarno Laaksonen from the Conservatory of Tampere composed the fine music. A talented group of enthusiastic academic teachers and researchers were recruited for the choir. They arranged the music and lyrics together with theater music student Emmi Uimonen in an incomprehensibly short time - in only a week! Emmi Uimonen conducted and accompanied the choir with excellent expertise. Ville Erkkilä and Pepe Lempinen recorded the choir performance. The video was edited by Hannu Nieminen and Tapio Rissanen, who also produced the choir project. Thanks to the Finnish Union of University Researchers and Teachers for financial support, which made the project possible.