“The whole time I was at Girls Rock! D.C., I just kept thinking about what a difference this program would have made in my life if it had existed when I was a kid,” Ventre says. “It took me ’til I was almost 30 to realize that I don’t need anyone’s permission to try something or to make something or to do something. Girls Rock camps teach this to girls in their early years and adolescence.”
A get-to-business, dynamic person, Ventre got the ball rolling here in Phoenix to start a camp to empower girls through music education, creation, and performance. When she put the call out for volunteers, a diverse and elated group of people came running. I was one of them. The first camp took place at Phoenix Center or the Arts on February 27. In an 8-hour period, four bands were formed, participating campers engaged in songwriting and instrument workshops, mingled with other campers at meals, were treated to performances by local rock band Mrs. Howl, learned about sound engineering from audio engineer Catherine Vericolli, and showed off their amplified skills at an end-of-day performance… and it was totally awesome.
The first camp culminated with the four newly formed bands – The Water Bears, Sassy Fox in Fuzzy Socks, Teenage Nation, and Three-Fourths – each performing the song they’d written and practiced that day. They rocked and rolled, and one girl even wrapped up her vocal performance by sliding down into the splits, like a true rock star.
On July 30, Girls Rock! Phoenix will hold its first big showcase from 1:30-3:30 p.m. at The Nash in Downtown Phoenix. Campers will spend July 25-29 forming bands and writing songs at Central United Methodist Church. Admission to the showcase at The Nash is a suggested donation of $5, but no one will be turned away for inability to pay. Ventre says audiences could hear just about any genre of music from the bands. “We teach mainly rock music and a DIY/punk ethos, but encourage campers to explore any genre they want, and even to invent their own,” she says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you hear everything from rock to R&B to punk to experimental to some amazing new style!” (Ventre adds they’re encouraging campers to embrace #cactuscore, “an ethos that incorporates fearlessness and trying new things in the desert.”)
For Ventre, one of the most rewarding aspects of running the camps has been watching girls grow from nervous to excited to empowered. “Women are taught over the course of our lives that we have reason to be scared of trying new things in front of people, especially in male-dominated arenas like music. Because if we don’t perform as good as or better than our male contemporaries, we can written off. This camp offers a totally different paradigm,” Ventre says. “We say that you don’t need to know how to play an instrument to join a band. It can take some time for that idea to set in with campers, but once it does, they’re unstoppable.”
It’s a message that took a while to set in even for Ventre. When she volunteered at a rock camp for girls in south east L.A. called Chicas Rockeras SELA, she sat in on the older girls’ guitar class because she wanted to learn to play. At the end of the week, she told the campers, “When I’m with you in this class, I feel so good about myself. I feel like I can do anything.”
“A 16-year-old girl looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘You should never feel any other way,’” Ventre recalls. “In that moment I realized just how powerful these camps can be. This 16-year-old learned what took me almost 30 years to understand. The next generation is going to do amazing things – inside and outside of the music world.”
For more information on Girls Rock! Phoenix and the July 30 showcase at The Nash, visit girlsrockphx.org.
-Amy Young is a Phoenix-based arts writer and drummer for local rock band French Girls-
(Niki D’Andrea contributed to this report)
