Jule Juergensohn has a dream. As a drummer for Berlin's Itchi Sun and self-proclaimed music nerd, she would like to see more women get their hands on instruments. “We want a music scene with more girls and women on the stages. Not just singers but drummers and bass players," she tells me in her flat in Berlin. "When I switch on the TV on a Saturday evening show I want a band with a girl on drums.”
Some day, perhaps, the stages and screens will be flooded with female musicians of all kinds. To help things along there's Ruby Tuesday Rock Camp für Mädchen, Germany's first rock camp for girls. Following a model set by several camps in America, it is scheduled for the first week of August in Cottbus, 100km south-east of Berlin.
Juergensohn, one of the camp's organisers, hopes campers will learn more than just chord progressions. As chronicled in the film "Girls Rock!", a documentary about a rock camp in America, adolescent girls are often cripplingly preoccupied with their weight and appearance. In a world populated with kittenish young singers (Miley, Britney, Leona and the like), there is much unlearning to be done. Juergensohn explains, "We want to show them there's more than the pictures from the media."
The week-long camp at Cottbus's university will see 20 to 25 girls between the ages of 12 and 16 trying new instruments, forming bands, writing songs and performing. Unlike the site of the original Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls in Portland, Oregon, Cottbus--in what was once the German Democratic Republic--is not blessed with an organic lo-fi indie scene. But the university has instruments, rehearsal rooms and music students keen to help, abetted by guest tutors drawn from Berlin's music scene, such as Kat Frankie, Susie Asado and Masha Qrella.
Having picked up the drums only two years ago, at age 28, Juergensohn knows well what she missed. “I don't want other girls to wait so long,” she says, with some regret. “My mission is to tell every girl, 'If you want to make music, start and do it.'”
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