State Fair's beloved 'Giant Sing Along' is about strangers sharing strange moments
The Giant Sing Along is now a fixture at the Minnesota State Fair.
Alanna Elder | MPR News
Walk to the northern end of the state fairgrounds on Underwood Street and you may hear an unusual sound coming from somewhere beneath the Sky Glider.
Tucked between the National Guard and arrays of outdoor wood furnaces and boat lifts for sale is a field of colorful microphones and a sign flashing the lyrics to popular songs.
The Giant Sing Along has been part of the state fair since 2011. And here’s something you may not know: it was originally created by an art and design studio based in Montreal.
What was originally planned as a temporary installation has become a staple of the fair. And there have since been two Giant Sing Alongs in Australia – at the Commonwealth Games and the Adelaide Fringe Festival.
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Melissa Mongiat, co-founder of Daily Tous Les Jours, spoke with MPR News host Cathy Wurzer.
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Audio transcript
INTERVIEWER: Walk to the northern end of the state fairgrounds on Underwood Street, and you may hear an unusual sound coming from somewhere beneath the sky glider.
AUDIENCE: (SINGING) You are my fire, the one desire. Believe when I say I want it that way. But we are our two worlds apart.
INTERVIEWER: A field of colorful microphones and a sign flashing the lyrics to popular songs. The giant singalong has been part of the state fair since 2011. And here's something you might not know. It was originally created by an art and design studio based in Montreal, Daily Tous Les Jours.
What was originally planned as a temporary installation has become a staple of the Minnesota Fair. And there have since been two giant singalongs in Australia, at the Commonwealth Games and the Adelaide Fringe Festival. Joining us right now to talk about the vision behind this zany project is Melissa Mongiat, co-founder of Daily Tous Les Jours. Melissa, welcome.
MELISSA MONGIAT: Thank you. Hi.
INTERVIEWER: Hi. Thank you for taking the time. We appreciate it. I want to start with a little bit of music here. One of our producers talked with Katie Hansen. Katie was working the morning to early afternoon shift in the singalong booth. And Katie said she was surprised by how many people are brave enough to walk up to a microphone. And once they do, she says it seems to bring them a whole lot of joy.
KATIE HANSEN: Man, it's such a good feeling. It's like everybody's singing the same song, and that happens like when you're at a concert or something. It's the same kind of feeling that you get, you know? But not every-- there's no like spectacle of a person up front. We're all just our own little spectacle and enjoying it together, in our mediocre to bad voices, all together. Nobody's the star. It's just kind of, you know.
AUDIENCE: (SINGING) Staying alive. Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'.
KATIE HANSEN: As you can see. It's-- yeah.
INTERVIEWER: Yes. Melissa, what do you think is the magic behind this?
MELISSA MONGIAT: Oh, I think it's the people. When we first had the idea and talked about it, this started with Northern Lights and Steve Dietz, who were the curators behind it and wanted to bring in an experience to the Minnesota State Fair. And speaking with the organizers of the State Fair, there was some a little bit, I would say, anxiety because of what we learned, was the Minnesota nice and how people were afraid that it's not in the culture to be just out there and let loose that much.
And I think we do have a few secret ingredients to make it to, you know, to ease your way into the singalong. The fact that there's no stage. The fact that people choose their songs before the event so that there's a little bit of a buildup and there's definitely relevancy to people coming together, and this little secret auto tune that just kind of equalizes a little bit the performance. You can barely-- you cannot really notice it, but it's there to make it all about the group performance and not-- and remove a bit of fear of individual solos.
INTERVIEWER: So it's not like it's karaoke. I mean, it is, but it isn't, right? It's strangers getting together and singing.
MELISSA MONGIAT: And yeah, that's what we-- that's what we live for at the studio, is to find ways for strangers to come together. It's a field of microphones. There is a giant screen with lyrics, but it's really not about a single performance. You always find, you know, like it becomes a big party. You have people who will go in front of the screen, not in front of the microphones, to perform to people.
And it just all walks of life come in and blend in. And yeah, there's a there's a great energy that comes out of it.
INTERVIEWER: Of course, you know that the US Surgeon General has called loneliness and social isolation a public health crisis. In this respect, this is what you're trying to do to battle that, it sounds like.
MELISSA MONGIAT: Yes, very much so. We work a lot in public space and using music and dance and singing to get people together and to break individual bubbles. And we've seen through the years-- the studio was established actually at the beginning. Giant singalong has been there since 2011, and we started the studio in 2010.
Visiting the Minnesota State Fair was one of the first things we did when we set up the studio, and we saw how through the years how more and more important it is, to have these kinds of experiences, just to create like an icebreaker for people to be together. Urban centers are becoming more and more dense, with more people. And it's important to not just think that people-- things will happen naturally, but to actually craft interaction between people.
INTERVIEWER: You know, this could have flopped, but it did not. And you probably had some sort of a gut feel that it was going to be successful, or you wouldn't have come all the way to the Minnesota State Fair. When did you-- why did you think this was going to be a hit?
MELISSA MONGIAT: I think seeing the excitement around choirs and the power of singing together. When we start working on a project, we always prototype things together and just trying out like singing songs in the studio, a few of us. You can feel the energy and the-- and the benefits from the exercise. It's after. It's actually-- we had that gut feeling, and we wanted to make it easy like by design.
Like I've said, with no stage and all. But and you always have this-- I remember the first morning, where it's empty, it's 8:00 in the morning or so when this day-- the fair opens. And the first participants are always the most courageous ones, because there's no one there. Like after that, it feels like there's this crowd that you walk into, and it's just natural. You can hum in your head, you can sing in a mic, and everyone is just part of this energy.
But I remember seeing that morning like just slowly, a mix of crowd building, and it was "Amazing Grace" playing. And you had a very old person, someone that was wearing a leather Harley Davidson jacket, and some teenagers, and all were singing "Amazing Grace" together, and it was chilling. And there is something in the power of music, and not just listening, but really singing that is-- yeah, that makes us feel good inside and together.
INTERVIEWER: Chilling in an awesome way, you know?
MELISSA MONGIAT: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: I'm wondering--
MELISSA MONGIAT: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Your studio, I got to ask you about Tous Les Jours. Is that-- what does that mean? Daily, every day? Or is my French not good?
MELISSA MONGIAT: Exactly.
INTERVIEWER: Does it? OK.
MELISSA MONGIAT: No, your French is pretty good.
INTERVIEWER: OK.
MELISSA MONGIAT: Tous les jours, yes.
INTERVIEWER: What's the story behind the name?
MELISSA MONGIAT: So we're based in Montreal. Montreal is a francophone city, but it's quite-- the studio works a little bit everywhere in the world. So we wanted to-- and in the city, you hear a lot of French and English spoken all the time. So it kind of is playing tribute to this-- yeah, this way of working and always living in two parallel dimensions that are constantly in dialogue, of those two languages. And the raw-- why the every day is that our raw material is the everyday.
Minnesota State Fair is an event, and it's one of the rare events that we work for. Most of the time, we're just out there in public space, when people are waiting for their bus to go to work or walking home.
INTERVIEWER: Because you work in public space, what new projects are you working on right now?
MELISSA MONGIAT: Oh, it's interesting. With the pandemic, we were-- yeah, there's a lot happening. We are installing in North Carolina a set of musical swings. Musical swings a bit at the same time as the giant singalong have been a staple project of ours. We have interactive pavements that make music with people's shadows or with people moving across the pavement. We are-- we just installed one in Cambridge, [? daydreamer ?] [? rocking, ?] of course. Musical Bench is also going to the North Carolina Museum of Arts.
We have projects in Germany right now that will be installed in a few weeks. A little bit everywhere. There's a lot of music, a lot of dancing that is coming to a public space near you.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, I love musical swings. I'm presuming that you sit on the swing, and you go back and forth, and there's sound that's created.
MELISSA MONGIAT: Exactly. The higher the swing, the higher the notes that you create at the end of each period. And when people swing in synchronicity, for the swing, we have this special mode where you trigger more notes, and melodies emerge. And that was our way of enhancing the collaboration and also the enhancing the synchronicity-- the synchronous moment when people are swinging that way. We all have memories when we were kids when that would happen naturally, and how good it feels, and it's underlining that emotion and making it even more powerful.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, delightful. Melissa, all best to you and your team. Thank you so much.
MELISSA MONGIAT: Thank you so much. It's been so lovely to talk to you. Thank you.
INTERVIEWER: Melissa Mongiat is co-founder of the Montreal-based art and design studio Daily Tous Les Jours.
AUDIENCE: (SINGING) You've got a friend in me. Yeah, you've got a friend in me.
KID: No, a friend. No.
AUDIENCE: (SINGING) You are my fire, the one desire. Believe when I say I want it that way. But we are our two worlds apart.
INTERVIEWER: A field of colorful microphones and a sign flashing the lyrics to popular songs. The giant singalong has been part of the state fair since 2011. And here's something you might not know. It was originally created by an art and design studio based in Montreal, Daily Tous Les Jours.
What was originally planned as a temporary installation has become a staple of the Minnesota Fair. And there have since been two giant singalongs in Australia, at the Commonwealth Games and the Adelaide Fringe Festival. Joining us right now to talk about the vision behind this zany project is Melissa Mongiat, co-founder of Daily Tous Les Jours. Melissa, welcome.
MELISSA MONGIAT: Thank you. Hi.
INTERVIEWER: Hi. Thank you for taking the time. We appreciate it. I want to start with a little bit of music here. One of our producers talked with Katie Hansen. Katie was working the morning to early afternoon shift in the singalong booth. And Katie said she was surprised by how many people are brave enough to walk up to a microphone. And once they do, she says it seems to bring them a whole lot of joy.
KATIE HANSEN: Man, it's such a good feeling. It's like everybody's singing the same song, and that happens like when you're at a concert or something. It's the same kind of feeling that you get, you know? But not every-- there's no like spectacle of a person up front. We're all just our own little spectacle and enjoying it together, in our mediocre to bad voices, all together. Nobody's the star. It's just kind of, you know.
AUDIENCE: (SINGING) Staying alive. Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'.
KATIE HANSEN: As you can see. It's-- yeah.
INTERVIEWER: Yes. Melissa, what do you think is the magic behind this?
MELISSA MONGIAT: Oh, I think it's the people. When we first had the idea and talked about it, this started with Northern Lights and Steve Dietz, who were the curators behind it and wanted to bring in an experience to the Minnesota State Fair. And speaking with the organizers of the State Fair, there was some a little bit, I would say, anxiety because of what we learned, was the Minnesota nice and how people were afraid that it's not in the culture to be just out there and let loose that much.
And I think we do have a few secret ingredients to make it to, you know, to ease your way into the singalong. The fact that there's no stage. The fact that people choose their songs before the event so that there's a little bit of a buildup and there's definitely relevancy to people coming together, and this little secret auto tune that just kind of equalizes a little bit the performance. You can barely-- you cannot really notice it, but it's there to make it all about the group performance and not-- and remove a bit of fear of individual solos.
INTERVIEWER: So it's not like it's karaoke. I mean, it is, but it isn't, right? It's strangers getting together and singing.
MELISSA MONGIAT: And yeah, that's what we-- that's what we live for at the studio, is to find ways for strangers to come together. It's a field of microphones. There is a giant screen with lyrics, but it's really not about a single performance. You always find, you know, like it becomes a big party. You have people who will go in front of the screen, not in front of the microphones, to perform to people.
And it just all walks of life come in and blend in. And yeah, there's a there's a great energy that comes out of it.
INTERVIEWER: Of course, you know that the US Surgeon General has called loneliness and social isolation a public health crisis. In this respect, this is what you're trying to do to battle that, it sounds like.
MELISSA MONGIAT: Yes, very much so. We work a lot in public space and using music and dance and singing to get people together and to break individual bubbles. And we've seen through the years-- the studio was established actually at the beginning. Giant singalong has been there since 2011, and we started the studio in 2010.
Visiting the Minnesota State Fair was one of the first things we did when we set up the studio, and we saw how through the years how more and more important it is, to have these kinds of experiences, just to create like an icebreaker for people to be together. Urban centers are becoming more and more dense, with more people. And it's important to not just think that people-- things will happen naturally, but to actually craft interaction between people.
INTERVIEWER: You know, this could have flopped, but it did not. And you probably had some sort of a gut feel that it was going to be successful, or you wouldn't have come all the way to the Minnesota State Fair. When did you-- why did you think this was going to be a hit?
MELISSA MONGIAT: I think seeing the excitement around choirs and the power of singing together. When we start working on a project, we always prototype things together and just trying out like singing songs in the studio, a few of us. You can feel the energy and the-- and the benefits from the exercise. It's after. It's actually-- we had that gut feeling, and we wanted to make it easy like by design.
Like I've said, with no stage and all. But and you always have this-- I remember the first morning, where it's empty, it's 8:00 in the morning or so when this day-- the fair opens. And the first participants are always the most courageous ones, because there's no one there. Like after that, it feels like there's this crowd that you walk into, and it's just natural. You can hum in your head, you can sing in a mic, and everyone is just part of this energy.
But I remember seeing that morning like just slowly, a mix of crowd building, and it was "Amazing Grace" playing. And you had a very old person, someone that was wearing a leather Harley Davidson jacket, and some teenagers, and all were singing "Amazing Grace" together, and it was chilling. And there is something in the power of music, and not just listening, but really singing that is-- yeah, that makes us feel good inside and together.
INTERVIEWER: Chilling in an awesome way, you know?
MELISSA MONGIAT: Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: I'm wondering--
MELISSA MONGIAT: Yes.
INTERVIEWER: Your studio, I got to ask you about Tous Les Jours. Is that-- what does that mean? Daily, every day? Or is my French not good?
MELISSA MONGIAT: Exactly.
INTERVIEWER: Does it? OK.
MELISSA MONGIAT: No, your French is pretty good.
INTERVIEWER: OK.
MELISSA MONGIAT: Tous les jours, yes.
INTERVIEWER: What's the story behind the name?
MELISSA MONGIAT: So we're based in Montreal. Montreal is a francophone city, but it's quite-- the studio works a little bit everywhere in the world. So we wanted to-- and in the city, you hear a lot of French and English spoken all the time. So it kind of is playing tribute to this-- yeah, this way of working and always living in two parallel dimensions that are constantly in dialogue, of those two languages. And the raw-- why the every day is that our raw material is the everyday.
Minnesota State Fair is an event, and it's one of the rare events that we work for. Most of the time, we're just out there in public space, when people are waiting for their bus to go to work or walking home.
INTERVIEWER: Because you work in public space, what new projects are you working on right now?
MELISSA MONGIAT: Oh, it's interesting. With the pandemic, we were-- yeah, there's a lot happening. We are installing in North Carolina a set of musical swings. Musical swings a bit at the same time as the giant singalong have been a staple project of ours. We have interactive pavements that make music with people's shadows or with people moving across the pavement. We are-- we just installed one in Cambridge, [? daydreamer ?] [? rocking, ?] of course. Musical Bench is also going to the North Carolina Museum of Arts.
We have projects in Germany right now that will be installed in a few weeks. A little bit everywhere. There's a lot of music, a lot of dancing that is coming to a public space near you.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, I love musical swings. I'm presuming that you sit on the swing, and you go back and forth, and there's sound that's created.
MELISSA MONGIAT: Exactly. The higher the swing, the higher the notes that you create at the end of each period. And when people swing in synchronicity, for the swing, we have this special mode where you trigger more notes, and melodies emerge. And that was our way of enhancing the collaboration and also the enhancing the synchronicity-- the synchronous moment when people are swinging that way. We all have memories when we were kids when that would happen naturally, and how good it feels, and it's underlining that emotion and making it even more powerful.
INTERVIEWER: Oh, delightful. Melissa, all best to you and your team. Thank you so much.
MELISSA MONGIAT: Thank you so much. It's been so lovely to talk to you. Thank you.
INTERVIEWER: Melissa Mongiat is co-founder of the Montreal-based art and design studio Daily Tous Les Jours.
AUDIENCE: (SINGING) You've got a friend in me. Yeah, you've got a friend in me.
KID: No, a friend. No.
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