When I last posted, I was dealing with an unfortunate combination of what one might call post-(camp) partum depression and very real, very serious distress over unrelated, un-processed emotional traumas. So I'm happy to report that, while I currently have a bit of post second-session-of-camp partum depression (which is really 'ugh, summer is over?!' bummedness), I've spent the time between sessions thinking a lot and working hard, and I feel much better than I did then. Camp was much less draining this time around, and I was able to enjoy it a lot more than I did in July.
A fellow volunteer celebrates a victory. Credit: Kate Milford.
I'm sure that the intervening weeks of reflection on my feelings had a lot to do with this, but I can't take all of the credit. Camp was a bit easier for practical reasons: I taught the advanced guitar section, which meant a smaller class, older campers, and some repeat students from previous summers. We also had the indispensable enthusiasm and assistance of our intern, Sophie, to whom I feel indebted.
Less classroom-related anxiety made it easier for me to socialize, as did the return of favorite volunteers from previous summers. Band coach and camp devotee Sarah made hours of kitchen drudgery go by quickly, while many hilarious counselors, both new and old, kept downtime in the volunteer lounge entertaining.
One day while I was in the lounge checking my e-mail, I overheard volunteers Vaughn and Jayne indulging in some bicker-y bantering (you know, the type that only seems to happen between bandmates). "You need to get in shape, girl!" Jayne snapped. Vaughn responded by singing the same thing back, "Get in shape, GIRL…" So of course, I had to butt in, and ask what they were talking about. "Youtube it," Jayne instructed. "Trust me, it's worth it."
I was expecting the line to be a reference to some really inappropriate SNL digital skit or something. Instead, it turned out to be from this:
In true rock camp fashion, Vaughn and Jayne discovered this kind of ridiculous, kind of really offensive, unbearably '80s attempt to capitalize on the health of young girls and set about reclaiming it, and I was there to support them. "It's like saying 'Get it together!'" Jayne explained, a kind of funny, colloquial way to express both concern and support, with both caring and a smidge of irony. We agreed that it's the sort of thing that clearly needs to be said "like, 20,000 times a day", and we got close. By the end of the week, the versatile and humorous Get in Shape! had become camp's new unofficial mantra, and sort of my own personal affirmation, as well.
Good times, for sure, but camp certainly wasn't without its difficulties. It was, as always, exhausting. There were the usual creative differences within the campers' bands, which mediating can be trying for volunteers and staff. And we had a few natural disasters, as well: first there was the earthquake, and then there was the threat of Hurricane Irene, and the transit system shutdown planned for the day of the showcase.
These alerts were all over the electronic highway signs that day. via
August 26, 2011, the Friday of camp week, dawned with the usual combination of excitement, tired, and premature nostalgia, as well as a hint of worry about the predicted widespread flooding of all of New York City. I was on site and multitasking by 8:15, somehow helping to set up breakfast, eat something myself, and help with reception all at once. I remember that day being humid and dreary, and I also remember that I was worrying about what to do about the showcase: I wanted to go, but knew that between the weather and lack of public transport, I probably shouldn't risk going into Brooklyn for it if I didn't have to be there.
Fortunately, I was spared this gutwrenching decision; in a typically bold move, the camp staff decided to hold the showcase not on that Saturday, but to instead have it that Friday, at 5pm, at camp. E-mails were sent to parents and caretakers, and the announcement was officially made at lunchtime, around 1pm.
I doubt I'm doing a good job of conveying it here, but, it was kind of nuts, to show up at camp expecting a normal Friday, and then end up staying for a two hour show, not to mention the volunteer after party. It was a long-ass day; many snacks and great amounts of coffee were consumed. But somehow we all soldiered through it.
We rallied, we had the showcase, and then we partied like the next day a hurricane might wipe us all out. I was a bit disappointed that the campers didn't get to have their day at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, where the showcase is usually held, but I'm also grateful that the campers had their showcase at all, and that I got to be there. One of the staff drew a comparison between our camp cafeteria showcase and a massive house show, which is sort of how it felt, and that's definitely not a bad thing.
I think that there was a general and shared sense of disbelief at the after party. A little disbelief that we'd decided to do things differently, that we'd actually made it work, and that we were all somehow still standing. There was also the usual sense of camaraderie that comes with a week of talking, laughing, and working closely with a small group of people, no doubt intensified by a literally incredible day and the expectation of real catastrophe that same weekend.
I eventually got over the shock though, and at that point, it was hard to be anything but inspired. Camp usually manages to expand your notion of what's possible, of the potential of both individuals and collectives, of how much we can both give and accept in return, of how different the world could look and be (far-flung as that may sound). This time around, camp helped me realize that, within the realm of possibility is my own survival, and maybe even my ability to 'get in shape', so to speak.
I was paging through tumblr a couple weeks ago when I came across this:
I'm not a fan of Bukowski (never did get into his work), but it's hard to not like this quote, or at least feel the truth in it. What isn't addressed in this excerpt though is that there are times when bringing one's own light to a dark situation can be really challenging. Tragedy and trauma can make it feel almost impossible to stay positive and approach things with energy and sensitivity.
I very recently learned this the hard way at rock camp. Last week I had the privilege of teaching guitar and helping out in the kitchen at Willie Mae Rock Camp during their first girls' session of the season. But with everything else that I've been dealing with in my personal life for the past few months, it didn't really feel like a privilege.
It initially felt more like an expenditure of energy that I really couldn't afford, and I momentarily considered bailing at the very last minute. But both the guitar classes and kitchen were severely understaffed, and my desire to help trumped my panic. Rather than running, I chose to train my laser-like focus on making the best of the situation, and on being the most helpful guitar teacher I could possibly be.
I could write in this forum that things were great as soon as I made that choice, but I'd be lying. Anyone who's ever dealt with grief and/or depression knows that getting through it takes a lot more than an attitude adjustment. I chose to put my energy and time into rock camp, and found that I had to keep making that choice, over and over again, in a lot of little energy-conscious ways.
In other words: all week, I had to be especially disciplined in the art of self-care, so that I wouldn't totally fall apart at camp. I had to discipline myself to go to bed at a decent hour and get as much sleep as possible, so that I wouldn't be a total crank in guitar class. I had to force myself to get up way earlier than I have in ages so I could drive to camp with minimal traffic and parking-related stress. And then when I got to camp, I would make myself eat a good breakfast and enjoy some iced coffee. Snacking throughout the day to keep up my energy was probably the easiest of these habits to maintain. (Rock camp provides WELL for its volunteers, my friends -- big ups to Marcia and Alison for feeding us!)
Friday morning surprise waffles for the volunteers, yay!
Photo jacked from the illustrious and talented Mal Blum.
Other stuff I did: I got in the habit of taking journal breaks once a day, where I would find an empty stairwell and take a few minutes to scribble down how I was feeling. I also tried to socialize and talk to the other volunteers as much as possible. My co-teacher and I kept up a constant dialogue about how class was going, and we were able to bring whatever issues that came up to the other guitar teachers and in one case, the camp staff. I also tried to talk as much as possible with the other kitchen volunteers while we were working there, and I did try, with varying success, to make some new friends.
Written out that way, all that self-care work might sound exhausting, and like, well, work. Yes, it was a lot of work, especially when one considers that most of it should just be a normal part of daily life -- you know, eat, sleep, hang out, duh -- but it was more than worth it. It took a lot of effort, but in the end, I felt better than I expected to about it.
What's kind of funny is that, for all of that work, the actual volunteer work wasn't that hard. Every morning I would sort of brace myself for guitar class -- I would take some deep breaths and try to let go of any negative feelings I had, and more or less pray that I wouldn't snap at an undeserving camper -- but it was never necessary. As soon as the girls came into the room and starting plugging in their guitars and fiddling with their amplifiers I would relax, and I would suddenly know what to do.
Because the reality, in my experience anyway, is that being supportive isn't really that hard, and being supportive is really what rock camp is about. Teaching is never easy, but listening to someone, simply being present, and then saying "that sounded great -- good job!" to a camper doesn't actually take tons of energy. Simply being present, and offering a snack or some leftover lunch to a volunteer who is hungry, doesn't take tons of energy either.
What required a lot of energy was taking care of myself. To bring it back to Bukowski (and from what I know of him, he would agree with this), sometimes we ourselves are that darkness, and we need to rely on other people's assistance. I think that I was able to get through this week, especially guitar class, because I had the energy of the campers and other volunteers to help me. There are times when we have to let others bring their light to us (frightening though that vulnerability may be); good thing we generally have a surplus of the stuff at camp.
As I mentioned in my last past, my beloved Willie Mae Rock Camp has applied for a $50,000 grant from from Pepsi, the soft drink behemoth. The corporation has recently launched its Pepsi Refresh Project, and WMRC has chosen to particpate.
Really? I'll believe it when I see it.
When I first started getting e-mails and notifications from camp and my fellow volunteers, I was skeptical -- this is an occupational hazard of being a feminist punk. I'm wary of all and any corporations, particularly when they start handing out money. I'm not really feeling how the project is more or less a competition, which pits causes against each other.
Something about a corporate conglomerate inviting and encouraging people to do charitable work feels a little "Won't Get Fooled Again" to me -- as in, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." I can't help but be suspicious that a company that produces a drink that is so bad for human health and so bad for the environment is encouraging people to do volunteer and non-profit work for public health and the environment. What does Pepsi have to gain from financing such projects? Or projects in their arts and culture, food and shelter, neighborhoods, and education categories?
Luckily, I'm not alone in my skepticism. Fellow volunteer and fellow artist and musician Maggie was brave enough to send an e-mail over WMRC's volunteer listserve asking if anyone else is feeling ambivalent about this.
Selling out? Ch'yeah, right -- and monkeys might fly out my butt!
The response's to Maggie's e-mail that I've seen have made me feel a little better about the idea of WMRC getting money from Pepsi -- but only a little. I think the main thing, as another volunteer pointed out, is that this money is a donation, not some sort of sponsorship deal. So Rock Camp would get this money free and clear. The donation would not enable Pepsi to direct or alter the way camp runs, or even dictate how the money would be spent. Accepting the grant would not require Camp to further support Pepsi, purchase more Pepsi products, or anything like that.
So this brings us back to the question of what the corporation would get out of this. Well, first, as Maggie pointed out, Pepsi is getting access to some personal information, including e-mails, which they can sell for a great deal of money at a later date. They also get a tax write-off for their donations, though as another fellow volunteer pointed out, so would any organization or individual who makes any sort of donation.
But what hasn't come up in these conversations is that Pepsi has a chance to get something more important and way more priceless than a tax break or some e-mail lists. Pepsi has a chance to get a good reputation, which bothers me more than anything else.
With this campaign, Pepsi has an opportunity to make itself seem like a responsible corporation. But let's be clear: there's absolutely nothing responsible about pushing liquid sugar in a can or plastic bottle on people.
There's also nothing responsible about the amount of water used to make soda. Water rights issues aren't huge in the U.S., and I only know about this because my dear friend Jackie has done research on Coca Cola and water, and my classmate Michelle has done (award-winning!) research on water rights and Bolivian indigenous communities. So I'm not sure that all my fellow volunteers are aware that it takes something like 4 liters of water to make a single liter of soda, and that soda companies get that water by taking it away from impoverished and desperate people in the 'Third' world.
Will not taking money from Pepsi change this? No, it won't. But my point is that I don't want people forgetting any of this. I don't want any of us to be fooled, or to think for even a second, "Well, I guess Pepsi isn't so bad. Because corporations -- it's definitely not just Pepsi -- usually are that bad. For them to create whatever useless product they create, something else has to get destroyed.
All of that said, it might sound contradictory, or even hypocritical of me to continue to support this campaign by voting daily for WMRC. Willie Mae's executive board, a group of fierce, talented, responsible women, is okay with this campaign, and I have to trust them. Those women shoulder the responsibility of running and financing camp, and so I support what they decide will make their job easier and what will make camp even better.
What really enables me to vote every morning is knowing myself, and knowing my position on all of this. Pepsi might get my e-mail address and access to my facebook page -- but they will never get my respect, my trust, or even my three bucks for a bottle of soda. And I know that my fellow volunteers will be able to dig that, or at least one of them will. Very special thanks to Maggie for e-mailing with me about this and inspiring this post!
The reality is that we all live and work in a world controlled by corporations and media. And at some point, every single one of us punk, feminist, pro-diy, anti-mainstream, pro-culture, anti-consumerist activists, artists, and resisters is going to face an issue like this. All of us are going to have our principles tested, our beliefs challenged, our buttons pushed for whatever cause it is that we support. And all of us, as individuals are going to have to sort out our feelings and decide how to respond. So these are my feelings, and this is how I respond:
Bite me, corporate 'charity'! p.s. special thanks to photobucket user Starriedreamer for unknowingly 'donating' screen caps.
I'm guessing that most of my (wonderful!) readers are pretty used to how I often shamelessly promote Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls. But this time, it's a little different.
Rock Camp is hooked up with a certain corporate beverage giant's new campaign to "refresh everything". And while most of my fellow volunteers have been rocking the vote, and posting everywhere, some of us are a bit unnerved at the prospect of accepting money from this particular corporation, myself included.
Despite my reservations, I choose to support Rock Camp, and its decision to participate in this whole thing. I unfortunately don't have time to write out my feelings about this right now, so for now I'll just post the widget. If you all are comfortable with it, please vote for Willie Mae! Corporations suck but 50K to help get our year-round, after-school band mentoring program off the ground most certainly does not suck!
p.s. Look for a more in-depth post on this issue sometime next week. (I know, you're all just dying to read it, right?)
According to my calendar, Willie Mae Thornton was born on this day in 1926. Does the name sound familiar? It should -- my beloved Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, which I shamelessly mention as often as possible, is named for her.
Thornton was better know as Big Mama Thornton, and is remembered today as the original writer of "Hound Dog". Her version of the song sold almost 2 million copies, and she received $500 for it. Several years later, Elvis Pressley took the song, changed the words, re-recorded it, and basically launched rock'n'roll, and became a really huge deal.
You can look at Elvis' theft in two ways: you can focus on how he popularized the and profited from the song and, and see it as another episode in the long history of white artists appropriating African American sounds and culture.
Or, you can look at Big Mama Thornton as the real mother of rock'n'roll and every genre and subgenre that came after. Rock'n'roll as we know it does not start with some lip snarling, hip wiggling, later drug and alcohol abusing white male cultural appropriator. The history of rock'n'roll in fact begins with a black female singer/drummer/harmonica player/songwriter who was apparently probably a lesbian. That's right -- Big Mama Thornton wasn't actually anyone's mama, even though in another way, she's kind of the mother of us all.
So a posthumous though sincere happy birthday to Willie Mae Thornton. Thank you for queering the blues, for the vastly superior original version of "Hound Dog" (in which it sounds like you're the hound dog, sniffing around and wagging your tail at the ladies, AWESOME). Thank you for helping to start all of this. Rock & the Single Girl is really, really glad that you were born.
I have mixed feelings about the article. Tobi writes that while "hipster culture" and its "male-dominated music sites that exert a disproportionate influence over what's trendy" continue to annoy, infuriate, and marginalize us female and feminist musicians, bloggers, and fans, "women have thrived in the past 10 years, and our history is being documented and preserved like never before."
I don't disagree with her, and I'm thrilled at the way women's contributions are finally getting recorded. But I'm worried that I'm too thrilled. Women's musical work is finally getting documented the way it should be -- I should be excited that we're just now getting what we should have gotten all along?
Today I'm blogging live from the second session of Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, in beautiful downtown Brooklyn! Instruments are being wielded, bands are coalescing, and music is being made, people! And, perhaps most importantly: about 100 girls, ages 8 - 18, are being transformed into confident, outspoken, bold young women. It truly is an amazing sight to behold.
And for some reason, it all reminds me of one of my favorite songs when I was a kid. They were a little before my time, but when I was a young girl of 8 or 9-ish, I was a big fan of The Go-Gos. How could you not love a band of five hot girls with rad '80s style, who seemed like the flirty bad girls from your local high school?
So today, in honor of Rock Camp, we present The Go-Gos' 1982 hit single, "We Got the Beat".
Though I've technically been on 'vacation' with my family for the last week, I'm still thinking about Rock Camp, and about the songs the campers wrote and performed for us. You wouldn't really describe all of them as 'rock'. Even though it's technically a Rock Camp, there is no stylistic standard or rule at WMRC. The campers are exposed to a lot different artists over the course of the week, and they get to hear recent popular music of various genres and subgenres. The result is that you can hear a lot of different influences in the songs the campers' bands write. At the last session's showcase, you could hear the girls perform songs tinged with rhythm and blues, new wave, soul, alt country, and even jam band type songs.
The songs are lyrically diverse as well. You can hear all kinds of points of view, a range of moods and tones, and tons of different themes and topics. Some of the songs are super serious, and some of them are really funny, like Sugar Collazo's "Female Llama Empowerment" (a mid-tempo "Dark Side of the Moon" style rocker about a gypsy girl whose best friend is a very progressive llama), and The Oxymoron's untitled number (a synth heavy Doors-esque stomp about an unconventional couple's non-traditional wedding and post-matrimonial adventures).
Most of the songs are a bit less fantastical. Most of the songs revolve around one or both of two themes: summertime freedom and self-discovery. Both themes frequently get tied to rock'n'roll, along with images and expressions of destruction, as in the shedding of old skins and the revelation of new ones.
Summer is a fun topic for the girls, they write about eating candy, going to carnivals and beach boardwalks, staying up late, and spending time with their friends. Underneath the frivolity is a childish sincerity. There's something almost sad about the campers' collective love of the season, and their group rejection of the way school can confine, overschedule, exhaust, and even terrify and bore kids.
The campers' songs about self-discovery are even more complex, and diverse. Their declarations of themselves and their empowerment can sound angry or jubilant. Their rejections of the status quo, their formerly conventional selves, can sound anywhere from joyous like, LOL's "Total Teenage Drama" --
to deadpan, like The Geeks --
to melancholy and introspective, like The Perfectionists:
My favorite example of a camper band writing about self-discovery is the song written last summer by Psychedelic Pink. They opened the August showcase with an untitled song, where they nervously sang that "Everyone thinks I'm a totally conventional/do I have to mention a /regular goody two-shoes school girl", but that there's "a rockstar inside of me that wants to get out/I really wanna let her out but I threw away the key".
One can't help -- and I'm almost certain that I speak for all of the volunteers when I say this -- but marvel at the depth and poignancy of what the campers have to say. I think almost all of us can relate to their lyrics about struggling to empower yourself, and then struggling to come to terms with who you are after you realize that there's a rockstar inside of you, in the words of Psychedelic Pink. And I think we can agree that hearing so many distinct and unique girls' voices, all saying similar things, makes you realize just how infrequently you really hear girls' voices. I've said it before in this blog, and I'll say it again: I believe that young girls, especially teenage girls, are the most misunderstood and maligned sector of society.
I know it isn't for lack of trying; it seems to me like a lot of corporations put a lot of energy into trying to figure out what girls want -- or, what they want to buy, at least. If these folks really listened to girls, the way we try to really listen to them at Rock Camp, they'd know that girls don't want to buy anything. They just want to be able to sing their songs of freedom. Because for "rock'n'roll girls" like us, songs of freedom are all we ever had.
Here's a little known fact about Rock Camp: at every session, some brave souls form a volunteer cover band. The Volunteer Cover Band has the important job of doing the sound check before the showcase begins. They have the even more important job of amusing the campers before they go onstage, and hopefully distracting the girls from any nerves they might have.
This week's hump day treat features the 2009 Volunteer Cover Band, known for the week as Thrill-Hers, and their performance of Michael Jackson's "Beat It". I know it's long, but be sure to watch the to end, the last few minutes are, in a way, the very best part.
Back in May I went to see my faves, Mortals, and before their set I was talking to guitarist Elizabeth, and she made a provocative statement: "Honestly," she sighed, "I think all girls are self-taught."
I'm a mostly self-taught guitarist, because as Elizabeth and I discussed, it's hard, as a 12 year old girl, to find a guitar teacher. Most of them are men, and most of them are young-ish guys who know a lot about playing the guitar, but don't know much about how to interact with a shy student. I explained it to Elizabeth as she folded and arranged Mortals t-shirts, "I didn't think I'd be able to find a teacher that wasn't some douchebag with a ponytail who doesn't want to play anything but Metallica...." "Ugh, and they're really all like that," she said, shaking her head and piling up a set of medium tees.
While I admit that my process of learning how to play the guitar by ear and out of books had many pitfalls, I've always been nothing but proud of all the time and effort I put into teaching myself. Or I was, until I saw my co-teacher at work during Rock Camp this year.
My feelings crystallized in one very specific moment. Rebecca, my co-teacher, had our students pair up, and had them work together on playing rhythm and leads. The rhythm guitarist was the play 12 bar blues, and the lead guitarist was to play the appropriate pentatonic scale over it. This way everyone got to learn more about 12 bar blues, and everyone got to improvise, and everyone got to play in front of everyone else.
As we went around the room, I felt relieved at how well it was going, and how enthusiastic the girls seemed about it. I watched Rebecca as she lead the activity, and it occurred to me that she's probably done the same activity in her guitar classes. I took a single guitar class in college, and we never did anything like this. I stood there, wondering: So is this how you're supposed to learn how to play lead?
In that moment, I didn't feel proud of how I'd taught myself to play. Instead I felt ashamed of everything I don't know yet about the guitar. And I felt annoyed, at how I'd missed out on taking lessons when I was younger just because I was scared. The established modes and methods of guitar instruction didn't work for me then, and unfortunately, even my parents, who were very supportive, didn't know how to help me find a teacher who would help me. (Though this was partly because I couldn't articulate what I was afraid of to them. I couldn't even entirely articulate it to myself.)
Being "self-taught" isn't a bad thing, and in a sense, all musicians are self-taught in that they have to be self-motivated when it comes to really getting good at playing, maintaining your skills, and most of all when it comes to developing your own sound and/or style. But "self-taught" becomes a problem as a matter of principle. No girl, or other intimidated student, should have to teach herself. And not every girl has the resources to do so. I was able to come home from school every day and play my guitar for three hours before doing my homework when I was 13. I learned all my open chords, my 7s and 9ths, from learning Beatle and Oasis songs. But how many girls haven't learned to play because they didn't have the time for that? I also had my father, who taught me my first chords, and he was some help to me. How many girls want to play the guitar, but don't have a relative or friend to help them get into it?
Fortunately, it seems that things are changing. None of the girls in our guitar class at camp were "self-taught". Some of them shared with us that they had trouble finding that right guitar teacher, and told us that they'd been intimidated, nervous, and even scared at first of taking lessons. But they all managed to get over it, and after a few years, now they're all fantastic young musicians.
It's important for girls to go forth into this frightening territory. We need insiders, like our students, and like Rebecca, to open up doors for us into schools of music both big and small. It's the only way we'll achieve parity, by proving to ourselves and to our teachers that we're capable. It's also the only way we'll be able to influence how music is taught, and the only way we'll be able to start accomodating any student who wants to learn in new and different ways.
I'm happy to report, dear readers, that I'm recovered from an exhausting, but super-successful week at the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls! In five days, my fellow volunteers and I helped 80 girls to form 16 ass-kicking bands, write 16 smart, funny, and often poignant songs, learn about body image, self-defense, music history, and music merchandising, and make an untold number of shirts, buttons, and zines.
As for myself, in addition to teaching guitar and helping our campers to use and understand their gear, I'm happy to report that I spoke to a number of volunteers, off the record of course, about their bands and projects. Many of our volunteers are working musicians and artists, and last week I got to hear the latest news on what their bands are up to, and about their experiences as musicians.
In many of these conversations the younger lady volunteers admitted to never having played with other female musicians before. It seems that none of them have played exclusively with men by choice -- all of the volunteers I spoke to about this told me that they'd never found other girls to play with. For many new volunteers, last week was their first real experience with a community of women musicians. My guitar co-teacher, Rebecca, for example, told us that she signed up to volunteer with Rock Camp because she'd never played with other women.
Rebecca is a songwriting and guitar performance student at a certain very prestigious conservatory. She's in what she told us was the biggest popular music program in the world, an apparently unique course of study offered by no other school of music. She is frequently the only female in her classes. When some of us guitar instructors pressed her to tell us more, she told us that she's witnessed and experienced all sorts of discrimination and condescension. She told us that she took on a guitar performance major in part because songwriting students are looked down on. Songwriting is assumed to be easy, while performance studies, which involve rigorous training in technique, is assumed to be one of the most difficult majors. Rebecca described these assumptions as 'totally gendered'.
I found this totally depressing. The upside is that based on the sexism she's encountered, Rebecca was able to facilitate what turned out to be a great in-class discussion on this topic with our students. We asked them to talk about being female guitarists and working with other female musicians. Like the volunteers, most of our guitar students hadn't played with other girls before coming to Rock Camp. Some of our students told us that they'd struggled to find teachers who didn't make them feel uncomfortable, and that they had issues with music groups at their middle and high schools: some of them afraid to audition because there weren't any other girls in the group, some of them were already in a school-based group but felt isolated and lonely in them.
Rebecca and I couldn't do much to actually help the girls with these issues. The best we could do was share our experiences, and encourage them to find solutions to these problems, to keep searching for the right teacher, to keep working until they feel confident enough to audition for groups, to keep looking for girls to play with and to support and keep in touch with each other as they get older. Rebecca talked about her program, and I admitted to the campers that I never really took guitar lessons, because I was too scared to even look for one that didn't intimidate or condescend to me. I told them that I was lucky to have played with other girls in my high school and college orchestras, and that I was fortunate enough to find a true mentor in my high school conductor.
Since that discussion, I find myself wondering about these issues. I find myself wondering why these problems existed ten years ago, when I was in grade school, and why they still exist. How can we change things? How can we start to make music and music instruction less sexist? Is this even possible? The more I thought about it, the less possible it seemed, and the more discouraged I felt.
Cut to the volunteer afterparty, held on Saturday in a beautiful Brooklyn backyard. I am exhausted from my week at camp and my brain is tired from mulling over rock's gender issues. I'm sitting at a picnic table, watching as my fellow volunteers chat, joke, sing, and tell stories about this camp session, and I'm sort of eavesdropping, even though this is totally wrong. I overhear my co-teacher talking to one of the other volunteers, and they're talking about playing jazz and about popular music studies, and they're talking about the sexism they've encountered in their music programs at school, and at clubs and bars and music stores. I overhear them planning to get together at some point and form an all-girl jazz combo.
At that moment, I stopped feeling discouraged. I no longer felt like it would impossible to come up with a way to deal with sexism in music, because I knew that just by being at camp, I was already dealing with it. I looked at my fellow volunteers, I thought about all the ladies I'd talked to that week, and all the loose plans we'd made to play together, and all the bands that had been formed because of Rock Camp, and that would be formed there in the future. This, I thought to myself, is why we do what we do at camp. And I didn't feel discouraged anymore, I just felt proud.
My extended family spent the last week and a half planning our Fourth of July celebration, i.e., deciding on where to have our annual barbecue, the logistics of how to get there, when to travel, what to cook, and who would bring what. I barely noticed, because I was too busy anticipating Rock Camp. That's right, it's finally that time of year: The first session of Girls' Camp at the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, in Brooklyn, NY, is upon us!
This week, I will be one of the lucky volunteers who gets to watch as almost 100 girls, aged 8 -18, learn what girls like me, who have been inspired by rock'n'roll, already know -- that loud isn't so much about volume as it is an attitude, and that that attitude can carry you way beyond the practice room, class room, and stage. For five whole days, our staff and volunteers will listen, watch, guide, mentor, and cheer as our campers learn how to play instruments, form bands, write songs together, participate in workshops about music, art, and women, and then perform the songs they've written for an audience of proud and supportive family members and friends.
If Rock Camp is sounding unique, special, and perhaps even, dare I say it, magical, that's because it is -- for a few reasons. It's not just that girls are learning how to play instruments and write songs, but it's how they're learning about music, who they're learning from, and the environment in which all of this takes place.
***Rock Camp is about letting girls learn in the way that suits them. We work really hard to make sure that each camper gets the individual attention she needs, and that she gets to have some say over what she learns. Instead of telling campers what they are to be taught, we ask campers what they want to learn, and what will help them become better musicians and performers.
***Rock Camp's volunteers are a diverse and wonderfully obnoxious, inclusive group of women. Most of us are working musicians, and many of us are students and teachers, who want to pass on our skills to campers, and share skills with each other. We teach and mentor in teams as often as possible, and we work hard to model cooperation and positive female leadership for the girls.
***Together, as volunteers, we do our best to create a safe space for the campers. Our goal is to make every camper as comfortable as she can be, and give them a place where they can learn about themselves both as musicians and as people. We especially reject oppressive and offensive gender, race, class, size, sexuality and body stereotypes and myths that might hold back or bother our campers. Even for myself, as a volunteer, camp feels like a tiny utopian society that is surprisingly free of such negative and harmful ideas.
While camp is certainly about the camper, and her experience, I often feel as though volunteers might actually get more out of it. As volunteers, we both get to enjoy working with our campers, and we get to enjoy working with each other not only as volunteers, but also as musicians and as peers. While each girl who comes to camp has the potential to be moved, transformed, and empowered, and to share this with the other girl, the volunteers get an altogether different satisfaction out of it. We get the satisfaction of knowing that we're working together on something that we know is much bigger than we are.
We work to help these girls to discover their voices, and we hope that they'll use them not just to make music, but to do whatever it is that these girls are meant to do when they grow up. And we work together to remind ourselves of our own potential, and the change we can affect both as individuals, and as a group, both within the music industry and beyond -- or at least, I do.
I'm finally back from an unexpectedly long hiatus. See, what with school and finals and all, and then the holidays, and then the serious illness of a loved one, I haven't had time to post to Rock and the Single Girl.
During this hiatus, I had the pleasure of reading what is secretly my favorite kind of album review: a bad review of what I know is a terrible band. It was in a magazine that I secretly read almost every week, Entertainment Weekly. (My excuse is that my stepfather gets it, and that I only read it because it's always there waiting for me at home.) It was a review of a band that I make no secret of despising: Nickelback.
In the recent EW that reviewed the entirety of 2008, critic Leah Greenblatt rated Nickelback's Dark Horse a C+. She calls the lyrics of the album's first track "execrable" (hello SAT word!), and further calls it "kryptonite for feminists". I guess that's not a serious criticism for some people, but I'm pretty sure she meant it in the most negative way possible. Greenblatt goes on to call the entire album a "marvel of low art", which might sound like a compliment, but probably isn't really.
Here's the only part of the review that wasn't enjoyable for me to read: Greenblatt writes that based on the massive success of Nickelback and other laughably lame cock rock bands like Hinder and Metallica, that we are in the "Year of the Dude." "The only sure thing in the music business in 2008? The testosterone caddies of AC/DC, Metallica, Hinder, and Nickelback..." says Greenblatt.
This news came as something of a surprise to me. It's impossible to not be aware of lame guy rock, there are more Nickelbacks and Hinders and Buckcherries and Three Days Graces and Avenged Sevenfolds every single day, they're coming at us from all sides, it seems. It's equally impossible to not be aware of what I consider high quality music that happens to be made by men: according to numerous best-of-2008 lists, 2008 was the year of TV on the Radio, a band that certainly deserves the critical acclaim. But Year of the Dude? That strikes me as a bit of an overstatement.
But then, I'm probably the wrong girl to ask. By this point, I'm pretty well-studied at the art of shutting out the mainstream. Reading Entertainment Weekly is the only connection I have to big mainstream media, and otherwise, I live on a different plane. For me, 2008 will always be the year I volunteered at Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in Brooklyn. It will always be the year that I had my faith in women's collective ability to create something powerful through music revived -- and by the keening, wailing, joyous racket produced by two hundred or so young girls, aged 8 - 18. (The other volunteers, who worked as their instructors and mentors, a small but fierce group comprised mostly of radical lady musicians, had a different, but positive impact on my faith in humanity.) I was so busy setting a positive, empowered example for my campers, and then so busy supporting the bands the volunteers play with that there was no room in my musical world for these dude bands, though I knew in the back of my mind they were out there.
'Out there', yes -- but I certainly wasn't aware of how popular these dude bands are. This review says that Nickelback and other related bands "collect platinum plaques like they seem to collect hangovers and cocktail waitresses." Nickelback alone has allegedly sold 16 million records! I can hardly even fathom that, in this day and age it's rare for a band to go platinum, forget 16 times platinum. I hate to say it, but I read the review several times, and I was convinced: in 2008, shitty guy bands dominated the industry. How depressing.
I was approaching the edge of despair over this news when it occurred to me: hey, 2008 is over. It's 2009 -- and while the lame bands that were so popular in 2008 are still here, that doesn't mean that they have to continue to be popular. It's a new year, reader, and it might not seem like it, but we have the power to decide what this year will be about. Maybe we can't control the ailing music industry, or the increasingly monolithic radio industry, or the frankly disappointing music television channels. But we can control what we pay attention to, and how we decide to live 2009. I didn't realize it at the time, but that's what I did with Rock Camp, I effectively changed my approach to music and life.
And who knows? Maybe if enough of us change the way we listen to and think about music and live performances, we can impact the industry. It might seem impossible, but think about it: a year ago, most of us thought it was impossible that Barack Obama would win the United States presidential election. Through out his campaign, Obama had millions of people cheering: "Yes we can!" Here's hoping that in 2009, we can keep saying "yes we can" to the challenges that lie ahead -- including the challenge of reviving our languishing music and pop cultures.
