Girls Rock! Summer Camp ready to rock
Arizona’s first all-female summer camp for girls who want to rock will welcome campers between the ages of 8 and 17 this coming Monday at Central United Methodist Church in Phoenix for a week-long crash course in the art of rock.
The camp concludes with them taking the stage at the Nash for their first live concert Saturday.
And Sarah Ventre, president of Girls Rock! Phoenix, is thrilled that the moment is finally here.
“It’s gonna be really cool,” she says. “Over the course of the week, the kids will learn how to play an instrument, join a band, write a song and then at the end of the week, they’ll play a show at the Nash. And because the camp is really focused on empowerment through music, there’s a lot of musicrelated activities but there’s also a lot of other stuff. For example, there will be a workshop on body image. There will be a history of women in music workshop, with a special focus on women in the Southwest. There’s a self-defense class. They’ll be designing logos for their bands and then screen-printing them on T-shirts. W There’s a ‘zine-making workshop. We do a lot of DIY activities.”
The idea, Ventre says, is to “encourage them to feel comfortable trying new things and to feel empowered and excited and enthusiastic about the possibility that they could be in all these different realms.”
There’s a national network of Girls Rock! Camps that grew out of the riot grrl movement, but the closest ones until this coming week have been in California and Las Vegas. Girl Rock! Phoenix tested the waters earlier this year with a one-day mini-camp.
Girls! Rock camps are important, as Ventre explains, because the rock world, as a microcosm of our larger problematic culture, hasn’t always welcomed women on an equal footing.
“It wasn’t until I was an adult that I felt I had permission to try something like this without having some kind of formal training or ‘knowing what I was doing,’ “Ventre says. “The music world is really male-dominated, and it can be intimidating for a young girl, especially, to decide she wants to pick up an instrument and learn to play it and feel comfortable in that space. A lot of times women are challenged when they pick up a guitar. People may dismiss you or your playing because ‘Oh, she doesn’t really know what she’s doing,’ or ‘Oh, she can’t even play whatever chord.’
It’s important that to learn that everybody has to start from somewhere, Ventre says.
“It’s OK that you don’t know what you’re doing,” she says. “The idea that you want to be in a band, you shouldn’t be limited by the thought that you don’t know how to play an instrument yet. The Ramones did not know how to play their instruments when they started their band. And they’re one of the most iconic bands of all time.”
The Girls Rock! Camp instructors are all-female by design.
“It’s important for girls to be in a space where they see other women doing the things they aspire to do,” Ventre says. “What’s that quote about ‘You can’t be what you can’t see?’ The bands that were really popular when I was growing up in Phoenix were filled with men. I came of age in the ‘90s when Dead Hot Workshop, the Gin Blossoms and the Refreshments were all blowing up. And there weren’t a lot of examples of women playing guitar or singing loud music or certainly playing the drums. So creating a safe space where girls can see women leading all their workshops, teaching all their instruments, coaching their bands, helping them write songs, carrying heavy gear, knowing the technical aspects of working that gear, that’s really powerful.
“I read this book in my late 20s called ‘Girls to the Front’ by Sarah Marcus, which was kind of an oral history of the riot grrrl movement. And it was the first time that I felt that someone had said to me ‘OK, if you want to be in a band just do it; if you want to play an instrument, just go for it.’”
Girls Rock! Phoenix is there to help those girls who want to rock just go for it, a lesson that has real-world applications that extend beyond the back door of your favorite local punk club.
“We don’t expect all the girls in Girls Rock! Camp to play an instrument or be in a band after camp,” Ventre says. “It would be really rad if they were. But the more important thing is for them to see that those ideas apply to lots of different things. Whatever it is that a girl is interested in, we want them to feel encouraged that there is a space for them to do that. And if there isn’t a big enough space for them that they can make that space.”