Free to Rock Out

By Celina R. De Leon, WireTap. Posted July 4, 2006.

"I like to sing, but I'm not doing that this year," said Hugo Orozco, 10, of Brooklyn, New York, a member of the bands Hellish Rellish and Magnolia. "I'm doing drums this year."

A native of Austin, Texas, Orozco first found out about rock girl camps last year when a family friend who worked at the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls in Portland, Ore., paid a visit. Orozco was all ready to rock out in Portland, but her family moved to New York. Luckily she found out about the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in New York City. And now Orozco will be attending the camp for her second summer.

"I got a letter two weeks ago saying that I got accepted. Yay!" said Orozco.

Thanks to the work and inspiration of the Portland Rock and Roll Camp for Girls founded in the summer of 2001, one-week-long summer rock camps for girls (ages vary between 8 and 18) have been sprouting across the United States and around the world. The camps have encouraged and taught thousands of girls to sing and play guitar, drums and keyboards, as well as tutored them to perform and record music.

Girl rock camps -- which are inclusive of music genres from hip hop to country -- have now spread to the South and the Midwest in the United States. There are also rumors that there will be a girl rock camp in Hawaii soon. As for the world, Canada and Sweden now have girl rocks camps of their own.

Karla Schickele, director and one of the founders of the Willie Mae Rock Camp, was a volunteer at the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls in Portland for two summers before she thought New York City should have a rock camp for girls of its own.

"A lot of my friends are musicians who are women, and I knew there would be a ton of women who could get into something like that," said Schickele. "And obviously there are a zillion girls in New York who would be interested in rocking out for a week. It just seemed like a good idea that made sense."

Like many rock girl camp volunteers and leaders, Schickele has a 9 to 5 job and gigs with her bands Ida and K, to balance in conjunction with her volunteer work with Willie Mae. But these commitments don't stop her from wanting to expand the camp.

Approaching her second summer camp session, Schickele is hoping to draw 200 girls to the camp -- more than three times as many girls as the camp had last summer. Schickele is also looking to create a Girls Rock Institute similar to the one at the Portland Rock Camp, a yearlong after school program "so the girls can have a chance to play music and work with other girls on a year-round basis. Not just one week in the summer," said Schickele.

Rock girl camp isn't free, but all the camps offer some type of financial aid. According to Schickele, more than half of the campers at Willie Mae last summer got full or partial scholarships. In addition, some of the families that can afford to, have given a little bit extra to help offset the cost for some campers.

According to Alexa Weinstein, board member and long-time volunteer at the Portland Rock and Roll Camp for Girls, it costs their camp $700 per girl.

"We charge $300 and offer financial aid to a large number of the girls who apply, so it often costs $500 or $600 with the financial aid or donations we get. But it's really important that we do this because we want to make sure it is accessible to everybody; that no girl is turned away because she can't afford tuition," said Weinstein.

"The hardest part is fundraising," added Weinstein. "The economy is not so great, and most people don't have the extra money [to give]. It's also tough because people are starving, people are dying in Darfur, and from Hurricane Katrina ... There are really terrible, undeniably horrible things that are truly leaving people in desperate need, and I think sometimes people think why should they give money to a rock and roll camp when they could give money to an organization that is working on hunger? It's a really tough question to answer. I can't tell people what they should do with their hard-earned money."

But what she can do, and what many of the camps do, is prove that the camps really do make a difference in the lives of young girls.

"There are so many girls who don't fit in the mainstream at school ... A lot of girls feeling like they have to join and can't fit in," said Weinstein. "They might not fit in because they're queer and out in high school. They might be big girls. There are a million things that cause them not to be a part of mainstream groups at school. But here, they can work with four other girls who they've never met before and have nothing in common with and can write a song with them in a week, get up on stage and play it, and truly have an amazing experience. It really helps them to blossom, and to change, and to come out of their shells."

Celina R. De León, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., is a contributing writer for Wire Tap Magazine.

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