When I was growing up in Alabama, the notion of a 10-year-old girl drummer in an all-girl rock band seemed as plausible as Lyndon Larouche getting elected President of the United States. Back then, girls just didn't rock hard (with a very few notable exceptions).
Since childhood, I've dreamed of having at my fingertips a reservoir of meaningful rock and roll albums played by women . From 2001 to 2004, females accounted for more than 50% of all record sales in the United States. This was attributed to the success of artists such as Celine Dion, Shania Twain, Jewel, the Dixie Chicks, Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow and Mariah Carey. Women want to listen to women sing - just a fact of life.
Although my reservoir of female-fronted albums is slowly filling, chick rock still dwells in the massive shadow of testosterone-juiced male rock. But maybe that's soon to change: I've stumbled on a place where girls are empowered to express themselves in the most pure, raw, loud, and magnetic way possible: Wille Mae Rock Camp for Girls.
For one week this summer, girls aged 8 - 18, from every imaginable economic and ethnic background, gathered at Friends Seminary in Brooklyn to learn how to "rock out." Through a convoluted process much akin to speed-dating, the girls form bands on the first day of camp. They are encouraged to form whatever type of band they find to be coolest. You want a band that consists only of two drummers? Cool. You want a band with a drummer, four guitar players, and five singers? Cool. Just a violin and a DJ? Great. Some girls have never played an instrument in their lives - but before the end of the week, they'll learn enough to play one original song in front of an enthusiastic throng of girl-rock fans.
Throughout the camp week, the girls attend workshops like "The History of Women in Rock and Roll," "T-shirt Silkscreening," and "Non-traditional Rock Instruments." They also have instrument class for an hour and a half every day, and band practice for two hours (I was a vocal teacher, and I advised one of the individual bands). During band practice, the girls have to compose an entire song, with absolutely no help from any counselors or family members.
Sounds like a recipe for disaster and cat-fighting, right? Well, the most incredible thing to me about Rock Camp was the extent to which the girls have an intense desire to make friends, be kind, and foster not just their own creativity, but also the creativity of every other camper. I never heard a girl telling another girl that her ideas were stupid or invalid. Hate speech was not allowed. Every girl was told she was cool. Shy kids were cool, fat kids were cool, kids wearing bunny ears and fangs were cool, being cool to everybody else was the coolest of the cool. The girls just ran around telling everyone "Chicks rock! We're gonna rock out! We rock just as hard as any boy!"
On Saturday, August 12, the girls of Willie Mae Rock Camp performed their original songs for a crowd of several hundred at the Society for Ethical Culture. The music ranged from controlled chaos, to not-so-controlled-chaos, to brilliantly poppy rock and roll. One constant ruled the night: every single girl on the stage approached her 5 minutes of fame with more grit and fire and conviction than just about any adult rock band I've ever seen. Check out these clips:
If the Willie Mae Rock Camp girls are the future of this country, I am pretty psyched to be a part of that future. It'll be a place where President Jenny Somebody power-walks all around with an iPod (designed by Alice Somebody) full of chick rock. Cool.