Rock and Roll Camps for Girls—A Revolution…
Written in 2007…
The stark reality of Portland’s depressed/non-existent job market unforgivingly slapped me in the face after I graduated from college. I proudly stepped out into the world with a BA and a hell of a lot of hope for the future, only to find myself working one shitty food service position after another. I hoped to use my English degree to teach, but I could not find any teaching positions in Portland. I sent resumes out to schools far and wide throughout the area, visited schools, tried to leverage the fact that I had interned in a high school while I was in college, and taught ESL to Ukrainians for years on a volunteer-basis, but I couldn’t find any takers in the schools. Portland was in the midst of a budget crisis, as usual, and was too busy “excessing” teachers (laying them off) and cutting down the academic year while cutting teachers’ salaries. The city was in no position to take on novice teachers into the school system.
Dejected, I found work in a touristy Greek restaurant downtown. Wearing shirts that proclaimed that we were “powered by ouzo,” the workers put in poorly-paid shifts under bitchy management, drinking away our troubles subsequently with our “shift drinks,” and some workers would throw away their wages on the lotto machines in an effort to gamble on a better future. The work environment was nothing short of desperate and depressing. When a fellow worker grabbed my tit one night, I took it as a great sign that it was time to leave, and quit the job in a hurry. Unemployed, I would hang out in the dilapidated house I shared with my friends, three transguys who worked in food service and in the tertiary sex industry (getting carpal tunnel from the intricate motions involved in assembling tit clamps).
I lamented my situation inexhaustibly, and so my housemates who worked at the 24-hour greasy spoon drag queen diner downtown talked me into taking some dishwashing shifts at the diner. The diner was dark and depressing, had a killer jukebox that grew old in about five hours, and was ruled with an iron fist by the large and imposing owner of the restaurant, a bitter bitchy woman who lurked in the roach-infested basement and surfaced every now and again to intimidate her workers for no particular reason. I washed dishes in the back, scraping off greasy bacon pieces and congealed egg yolks for hours on end while my vegan housemate fried up the meaty eggy slop in the kitchen across from me. My co-workers were waiters by day, drag queens by night. The restaurant was located on Stark Street, the gay area of town. There were no real dyke areas of town, but of course the boys had their own district. Queens and teens populated the diner—queens after they had been out all night drinking, and teens who could not yet spend their nights drinking anything but coffee. I would read issues of Dishwasher Zine on my breaks, in an attempt to get into the dishwasher lifestyle, but I couldn’t really get down with it. After studying for four years in order to be a high school English teacher, my food-service life depressed the hell out of me. I essentialized my self-worth with my job, fell into a depression, and would spend my off-hours drinking away my troubles. It was getting ugly.
I took one crappy job after another for the duration of that year after graduation, from waiting tables to a short period at the huge bookstore (getting fired for union activities, excuse me!), falsifying a resume to make it look like I had extensive experience waiting tables- getting a server position- getting fired for being a really crappy server—yeah, it was bound to happen… I finally started working for myself, doing odd jobs for cash under the table. I was raking in the money, which was really amazing in a town where getting paid more than seven dollars an hour was hugely abhorrent. I painted kitchens, walked dogs, mowed lawns, chopped down thorny aggressive blackberry bushes. I billed myself as “Your All-Purpose Worker,” and managed to find positions working for primarily musicians, artists, and hot queers. It was a pretty good setup, but it still felt relatively vapid and meaningless. I wasn’t moving forward on my goals for the future; I was just biding my time working doing “anything non-sexual” and spending my off-hours drinking and hanging out. Portland has a real culture of hanging out, a pervasive malaise that overtakes the town, as the job market is so depressed that no one can work very much, and rent is so cheap that no one really has to work very much anyway, so people just kind of hang out drinking crappy beer on porches all day long. That sort of a lifestyle is fine for a while, but I was beginning to long for more…
Somehow, by word of mouth, I heard that a group of local ladies was organizing a “rock camp for girls” that would occur during the summer. I was interested, as I felt some sort of revolutionary potential apparent in the mere sound of the rock camp. Playing rock and roll with kids in high school had an amazing transformative power in my life, and I was interested in helping other girls access this powerful culture of DIY rocking out. When I was young, I had trouble locating other girls who were into rocking out, and so I ended up playing music with boys because of the dearth of young female musicians in high school. Playing with a girl band was very important to me, and I managed to find ladies to play music with in my young adult life, but I wanted to see more girls get involved with music in their formative years. I was sick of the male-dominated rock world, and a rock camp for girls seemed like just the project that might alter the patriarchal landscape of rock and roll from the ground up.
The first volunteer meeting I attended was populated with a room full of energetic and friendly ladies who I had never seen before. A whole new part of Portland emerged before my eyes. Where had these rad ladies been all my life? We were all excited to met each other and embark upon this amazing project together. A couple of phenomenal ladies led us in an anti-oppression training, to set a positive tone for the week. After the anti-oppression workshop, we received an orientation in what we were to expect out of the week of rock camp, and then we broke up into groups based on what our jobs would be at rock camp and commenced planning. I found the other guitar teachers, and we proceeded to brainstorm about how we would teach something that we had little or no experience teaching.
Many of us were self-taught musicians, unaccustomed to conceiving of music in any formal manner. The last formal music training I had received was when I was little and took piano lessons. I found reading music to be daunting, and I didn’t like to bother with thinking about notes too much. I mostly learned how to play by ear. We concluded that our non-traditional approaches to learning music would serve us just fine, as we wouldn’t overwhelm our students with a huge amount of theory, but we would give them some basic tools that they could grasp quickly and use to create their own music. One short week is not enough time to expose students to a huge amount of formal music training. However, this is enough time to teach students the basics, using an intuitive approach and focusing on building ear-training, confidence, creativity, and collaboration skills. We needed on building these skills quickly, so that the students may immediately start creating their own songs in bands. Students would in with a range of skills, and we need to be able to prepare the beginners to be as ready to create an original song as the more experienced girls.
We were amped. With a couple of days of preparation, we were ready to teach the girls music. The rock camp for girls project was fairly unprecedented; we didn’t know what to expect, but we were anxious to be part of whatever social experiment was going to unfold over the next week. We entered Portland State University on a Monday to denizens of excited girls, parents, and media, taking our places among the masses and navigating our way through the day. Assemblies commenced each day, as the girls gathered together to focus on what the day’s activities would look like. Subsequently, we divided up into instrument groups, where the girls could focus on learning their instruments.
Somehow we novices made it through the week. We met the girls, taught them instruments, supported them through band practices, encouraged them to rock out as hard as possible, helped mediate disputes, coaxed shy girls out of their shells, and generally had a great time of it. Somehow, with no experience ever doing anything like this before, we were able to make it a success. Most of the volunteers were queer or just didn’t fit into normative society, and so we took great joy in being able to help the more outsider girls feel at ease in their identities. Girls who were reluctant to talk with one another or look each other in the eye on day one were writing songs with one another by day two, and were rocking out publicly on stage by the end of the week. Girls transcended their inhibitions and became rock stars within the course of five days. The week of rock camp was an amazing and empowering experience for the campers and volunteers alike. At the end of the week, the girls had musical skills and confidence, and the volunteers each other.
The volunteers proceeded to hang out on the regular. We formed bands, had shows, and supported each other’s creative projects. We forged enduring friendships and relationships with one another. In each other we found a lady rock and roll community, within which we were unstoppable. Within rock camp, we found community. Prior to rock camp, I essentialized my self-worth as contingent upon whatever job I held at any particular moment. Subsequent to camp, I learned to separate my identity from my job and enjoy life for the simple pleasures of making music and forging friendships. My crap jobs didn’t matter so much anymore; so long as I could make rent, I was happy. I had community and creative projects to sustain me, and for this I felt fortunate. Perhaps I had to wash dishes or shelve books to make a living, but I was having a damned good time during my off-hours, and for once this was enough. I no longer felt like a failure for not having a career. Now I knew that what I “did” (i.e. “What do you do?”) was not necessarily just work in food service or retail, but was create and live life as completely and intensely as possible.
I continued to volunteer at rock camp for as many summers as I could, missing one or two due to professional commitments as I finally got a “career” kind of job teaching public school in NYC. I always enjoyed returning to Portland to meet up with the volunteers and teach guitar at rock camp. In the summer of 2005, a new rock and roll camp for girls started in New York City- the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls. I was pleased to be a part of the action, as the one thing I lacked in New York (besides cheap rent) was a connection to a lady music community. Through the rock camp out here, I found other ladies who enjoyed rocking out. Once again, we found community and formed bands with each other out here. I was fortunate to be a part of this amazing movement to empower girls through music in NYC. Again, the volunteers had an amazing time. One volunteer was empowered to leave her office job and seek employment as a teaching artist in the public schools, another volunteer felt empowered to leave an abusive relationship, and other volunteers (and campers) came out as queer. It was an amazing week. Subsequently, we started an after school rock camp program for girls at a public high school on the Lower East Side, serving
Rock camp still continues in both Portland and New York City, and the rock camp for girls movement has spread across the globe to places both in the states and internationally. There are now additional rock camps in way too many places to name, including one in Germany. Additionally, a former rock camper from the Portland camp has started an after school rock program at Everett Middle School in San Francisco, California. Dina started the program, Garage Band Business, a year after attending the Portland rock camp. It makes me so glad to know that the rock camp movement is spreading far and wide across the globe. Every town should have a rock camp for girls!
The Rock and Roll Camp for Girls (Portland, Oregon) www.girlsrockcamp.org
The Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls (NYC) www.williemaerockcamp.org
Ruby Tuesday Rock Camp http://www.rubytuesdaymusic.de/english.html
Have fun, and keep rocking out!
