COPENHAGEN — On a morning in late June, 16 women arrived at an city courtyard for the timeless summer time ritual of camp drop-off. Some got here clutching their mother and father’ palms; others raced forward to greet outdated buddies. One younger teenager with strawberry-blond curls, who had come as a result of her working mother and father informed her she couldn’t sit residence alone all day, stood nervously ready for issues to get underway. However it wasn’t lengthy earlier than the 13-year-old fortunately joined an ice-breaking recreation. “Hello, my identify is Anna,” she chanted, as she clapped out a rhythm that the others repeated again to her: “Ba-BAH-ba-ba-BAH.”
The campers, who ranged in age from 9 to fifteen, had simply gotten their first lesson in jazz. Over the subsequent 4 days, they’d study in regards to the style’s distinctive rhythms and melodies, and check out their palms at improvising on various completely different devices. However maybe a very powerful lesson for the scholars at Jazz Camp for Ladies is that there’s a place for them in jazz in any respect.
Loads of artwork varieties have a gender imbalance, however in jazz, the place males closely dominate the business’s manufacturing, consumption and training, the inequality is very pronounced. From 2007 to 2018, girls musicians led or shared the lead on lower than 20 % or so of the 50 greatest albums within the NPR Jazz Critics Ballot. One latest research discovered that simply 4 % of notable jazz musicians in the UK are girls. And even in supposedly egalitarian Denmark, the proportions have been completely uneven; a 2012 report discovered that girls made up solely 20 % of the rhythmic music business there.
“It was a shock,” mentioned Agnete Seerup, deputy director of JazzDanmark, a corporation that co-founded the ladies’ camp in 2014 in response to that damning research, and at this time oversees this system alone. “So we created the mission to encourage extra women to play rhythmic devices. And hopefully change the gender stability down the street.”
The jazz musician Johanna Sulkunen was considering of the results of that imbalance when she enrolled her daughter within the Copenhagen camp. “You’re not taken severely,” she defined. “You don’t get solos. You’re not seen as a musician.” Saying goodbye to Alma, who’s so small that she has to relaxation the underside of her saxophone on a stool when she performs, Sulkunen mentioned she hoped issues can be simpler for the 9-year-old. “I actually hope that for her, it could actually simply be in regards to the pleasure of creating music.”
This 12 months’s camp was held in 11 cities throughout Denmark from June 27 to 30. Grouped into eight-person bands, the ladies had been taught by instructors who’re additionally working musicians. The 4 days culminated with a live performance for household and buddies.
On the primary day of the Copenhagen camp, held on the Rytmisk Heart music faculty, the ladies gravitated to devices they knew — Lola Engell, a 10-year-old in a Rolling Stones T-shirt, tapped out a beat on drums whereas Flora Aaris-Hoeg, 11, strapped on an electrical bass. Jazz Camp focuses on rhythmic devices to counteract the historic relegation of girls in jazz to singing, which was usually solid as “leisure” relatively than the intense artwork practiced by males. And it makes a degree of shifting the ladies by means of various them.
“Rotation is an enormous a part of what we do,” mentioned Cecilie Unusual, an teacher and saxophonist. “We’ve had women who’ve by no means sat behind a drum set, and while you ask them to play it, a few of them will likely be like, ‘I don’t suppose so.’ However it’s actually necessary to get everybody to attempt the whole lot. And typically you see actually quick {that a} lady has a knack for an instrument she had by no means tried earlier than.”
The emphasis on rotation can also be meant to assist the ladies overcome the self-consciousness that typically limits them. “Ladies naturally have virtually the identical curiosity within the devices as boys,” Unusual mentioned. “However they want extra management: they fear about how they appear and don’t wish to make errors. That may be a barrier.”
Flora, the 11-year-old whose first instrument is bass, mentioned she preferred not having boys round: “It simply makes you extra comfy.”
Encouraging the ladies to improvise — there isn’t any sheet music on the camp — builds confidence whereas additionally introducing an necessary facet of jazz efficiency. Unusual taught the ladies to play just a few classics from the jazz repertoire, like Sonny Rollins’s “Sonnymoon for Two,” however the camp’s different teacher, the saxophonist and composer Carolyn Goodwin, took the ladies in a extra experimental course. “I need these women to really feel like even when they don’t establish with the normal method, that they’ll nonetheless discover themselves within the music in one other means,” she mentioned.
On the camp’s second day, Goodwin received the ladies began on their very own improvisation by taking part in a variety from “Zodiac Suite,” and asking if anybody knew the composer. When not one of the campers raised her hand, Goodwin informed them that girls composers had been a part of jazz’s story even when they weren’t well-known. “This one is by Mary Lou Williams,” she mentioned. “Are you able to say her identify?”
Viola Sisseck Rabenhoj, 10, had a knack for composition; even earlier than camp, she and her fellow camper Alma had written a chunk about Alma’s pet hamster, Vinny. Now, Goodwin took a melody that Viola had created, and requested the ladies to observe Williams’s instance and riff round a Zodiac signal each by taking part in and by writing a brief textual content. They later put the weather collectively right into a music with spoken-word lyrics. Working towards it on the ultimate day of camp, Aya Knudsen Rein labored a flourish into her drum solo, then smiled proudly.
Years after collaborating within the 2014 and 2015 Jazz Camps, Kathrine Stagsted Lund, now 23, stays grateful for the expertise. “It most definitely had an influence on me,” she mentioned. “I received launched to the double bass, which I proceed to play. I volunteer at a jazz membership and all the time hunt down the jazz concert events in Copenhagen.” Greater than something, although, the expertise helped her navigate taking part in in rhythmic ensembles: “As a younger feminine instrumentalist all the time outnumbered, it gave me a way of confidence and braveness.”
For the primary time this 12 months, Jazz Camp for Ladies will even be held in Finland, Poland and Sweden. However for all their anecdotal success, the applications nonetheless have some methods to go earlier than their influence is measurable. Final 12 months, JazzDanmark studied why the needle hadn’t moved a lot on the 80/20 gender distribution. “We discovered that personal networks actually matter in jazz,” Seerup mentioned. “Many roles within the music business are given out one evening at a bar, and in the event you’re not a part of that personal community, you’re much less more likely to get one. What we’re specializing in now could be creating robust relations between women now, so they could develop into networks later.”
On the ultimate day of Jazz Camp, these networks gave the impression to be off to a very good begin. Anna Kirkhoff Eriksen, the strawberry-blond drummer who hadn’t recognized anybody when she arrived at camp, had develop into quick buddies with Sarah, who performed keyboards, and Liva, who thrilled the viewers on the remaining live performance along with her trumpet solo. And Flora, who was comfy on the bass however had been nervous to be performing her first drum solo, was delighted with the way it had all gone.
“That was nice!” she gushed, as she exchanged telephone numbers along with her new buddies, Aya and Lola. “We should always type a band!”
Supply: NY Times