Girls' rock rules!

"Are you ready to rock?" asks a small voice. A girl no older than 10 and no bigger than a bass guitar steps up to the microphone, looks nervously down at her notes, and proceeds to screech her lungs out. Welcome to Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls, a Portland, Ore.-based nonprofit organization founded in 2000 to "eradicate all the limiting myths about music and gender that make girls afraid to speak up, sing out, and make noise," according to its founders. Three years ago the organization launched a new program that's both a fund-raiser for the camp and an opportunity for women to rock out too. Ladies Rock Camp gives women of all ages and all experience levels the opportunity to take lessons in guitar, bass, keyboards, vocals, or drums, participate in workshops such as "Rock 'n' Roll in Everyday Life," form bands, and perform together. This year's camp will be held May 5-7 at camp headquarters in northeast Portland. Participants in past years have ranged in age from a 19-year-old who graduated from the girls' camp to a 61-year-old whose kids signed her up "because they think she rocks," according to organizing committee member Alexa Weinstein.

Nsayi Matingou, who was 15 when this photo was taken, attended Rock Camp two years ago.

"Even if you play music, and even if you play music with women, this is special," says Weinstein, who plays with the Portland-based band Wind Up Birds and was herself a camper last year. Even someone who has never picked up an instrument before should expect to perform at the Sunday afternoon showcase. "The good thing about rock and roll," says Weinstein, "is if something is raw and sloppy, that's cool."

The organizing committee and the campers are a mix of queer and straight women, but the concept of the camp, at its core, is a queer one, according to program coordinator STS, a self-described "big flaming dyke" who played drums as part of homocore duo the Haggard. "The queer women of Portland, they are a part of a politically activist community," says STS, "and the expression of a lot of our political beliefs is making music the medium for self-esteem and learning about who you are and your identity and valuing yourself."

"If there's a woman out there who's like, "That sounds like fun, but I couldn't do that, that's for cooler people,'" Weinstein says, she has a message for her: "It is for you. Anyone who dreams of it, who thinks it sounds wonderful, she belongs at camp."

Emonni Kelly and her band, Super Tough

Prior to a workshop, two campers concentrate on tuning their guitars.

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By Beth Schwartzapfel

Schwartzapfel has written for Rhode Island Monthly and Lilith.