UCLA Center for the Study of Women

The act of making music can function as a tool for resistance and empowerment. Rock and roll schools for girls, which have developed across North America in the wake of the Riot Grrl movement of the early 1990s, use feminist approaches to music education to teach young women how to empower themselves and articulate their voices through music. This paper is based on interviews conducted with girls, aged nine to twelve, who participated in a Rock and Roll School for Girls workshop that I organized and facilitated in January, 2007. At this workshop, the girls learned basic guitar, drums and songwriting skills in a non-hierarchical environment informed by feminist and alternative approaches to pedagogy. Drawing on methodologies from feminist theory and musicology I will argue that women have traditionally been prevented from expressing our voices, and that music can act as a vital tool for self-expression and for the furthering of progressive political ideologies. Research from the growing field of Girl Studies and musicological work documenting the exclusion of women from rock music subcultures provide justification for girl-focused music education. Drawing on the work of feminist theorists, including Helene Cixous, I will examine the concepts of voice and vocality, specifically as they apply to young women. Ultimately, the goal of this paper is to argue that rock music can function as a feminist activist tool and that rock and roll schools for girls can provide young women with the musical skills through which to subvert gender norms and articulate empowered voices.