This post is frickin' long...

...and has taken many a lunch break to write, and I'm still not done. But anyway, I figured I'd post the first part.

So, Rock ‘n’Roll Camp for Girls. What is it all about, you ask? Well, RRC4G was founded in 2000 by a woman named Misty McElroy. It was actually her college thesis project, and was only intended to be a one-time thing. However, it was so successful that she did it again the next year, and the next, and now it’s grown to the point where scores of girls ages 8-18, from all over the country and all around the world, descend on Portland each summer for one very intense week of music-making.

The basic idea is to give girls a sense of entitlement to music as a form of self-expression, to allow them to find their individual voices (literally and figuratively), explore their creativity, learn to work productively with others, and most importantly, to have FUN. (Because playing music is like, the funnest thing ever.) They take classes at beginner, intermediate, or advanced levels of guitar, bass, drums, keys, vocals, or DJing. They form bands based on age and preferred style of music, including but not limited to rock, pop, punk, goth, r&b, and hip-hop, and they write an original song with their band. They take workshops on things like DIY recording, zine-making, surviving as a female artist in the music industry, and just surviving as a female in the world (i.e., basic self-defense). They finish the week off with an always-sold-out showcase at a Portland club, where each band performs its original song. And the whole thing takes place within a specifically feminist framework: all of the teaching and guidance positions are filled by experienced women musicians (though men are allowed to volunteer in other capacities, and there were a couple of dudes there) in an atmosphere that is positive, open, nurturing, and as non-hierarchical as possible.

I first read about the camp in a magazine (I think it was Bust) a couple of years ago, and immediately thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard. My female musician friends and I were always complaining about how it seems most girls would rather have a boyfriend who’s in a band than be in a band themselves, and wondering how we could encourage more girls to make their own music, and here someone had come up with an awesome way to do just that. I’ve wanted to volunteer ever since, but this year was the first time I could afford to do it. I offered to do just about anything, and was assigned to teach a beginner bass class. There was another beginner bass teacher as well, and a total of 8 students, and we decided to keep them all together rather than breaking them up into separate groups (which I think I think was a really good idea, as she and I had different approaches to teaching that complemented each other nicely). Our girls were amazing--attentive, focused, and quick to learn. In fact I couldn’t believe how quickly some of them picked things up. There’s a picture above of some the bass students--check out the little one in front with the curly brown hair. Her name is Alexia, and she came all the way from Thailand to be at camp. She was my student. She had never played the bass before, and she had these tiny little fingers...yet by the end of the week, she was jamming out killer bass lines with her band.

In the mornings, camp would start out with an assembly. The girls would do fun community-building exercises and sing the camp song, a groovy blues number, accompanied on guitar by none other than Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney. Then it was instrument instruction until lunch. During lunch, bands would come and play. On the first day, the Donnas came! I can’t tell you how much I fucking adore the Donnas. Unfortunately they were not allowed to play due to landlord suckiness, but they had a Q&A with the girls and then hung out and signed autographs (see picture above). I talked to each of them a little bit, more so to Torry, the drummer, who I’m totally crushed out on, and I tried to control myself but I think I gushed a bit. Anyway, the rest of the week the bands actually got to play, including a local hip-hop outfit that played on Friday, and turned all of the hundreds of campers and staffers into one giant sweaty lunchtime dance party.

...to be continued