What sets the Willie Mae camp apart is its refusal to treat rock as just another soccerlike activity. Patterned after the six-year-old Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls in Portland, Ore., the program has roots in the feminist punk-rock riot grrl movement of the Pacific Northwest. The camps on both coasts aim to provide a real-life antidote to the classic-rock crash course presided over by Jack Black in "School of Rock," in which fifth-grade girls in the head-banging comedian's kiddie band project are dismissively anointed "groupies."
At Willie Mae, named for the blues singer Willie Mae Thornton, known as Big Mama, counselors don't spend much time on groupiedom, video vixens or anorexic starlets. Neither do they coach girls to join the boy's club of Guitar Center virtuosity. With an inaugural class of 66 campers, ages 8 to 18, presided over by 40-plus female volunteer counselors culled mostly from the local music community, the New York camp's mission stretched well beyond basic rock musicianship to consciousness-raising.
"For me, feminism is having no doors being closed to you because you're a woman," said the camp's founder, Karla Shickele of the Brooklyn band Ida. To that end, she said, the camp aims "to create a place where girls can be loud and expressive."
"I do think rock can make a difference," Ms. Schickele said. "Playing music changes the way you feel about yourself and the sense of what you can accomplish. It makes them aware that they can challenge things."
The cultural powers that be may want to declare the gender wars over, Ms. Schickele said, but she said she was struck by campers' accounts of feminist challenges in their own lives. "The 8-year-olds here might not be talking in terms of 'feminism,' but they have a very developed sense of fairness," Ms. Schickele said. "They have already been told there are things they can't do because they're girls."
