Chicxs Rockerxs celebrates 10 years of punk rock passion

At the end of her first summer camp, 11-year-old Naíma Arteaga was nervous about the final group activity required of her: singing in a rock band and performing on stage in front of a large audience.

The task seems ridiculous, but Arteaga was at no ordinary camp: She was at Chicxs Rockerxs South East Los Angeles (pronounced “cheek-ecks roh-kerr-ecks”), where girls, trans youth, and youth gender fluid learn to play instruments. , create bands together, write original songs and perform live in front of an audience at a showcase, all in the space of just one week.

“Coming into this camp, I was honestly a little more shy,” said Arteaga, who is now 18 and volunteers at the camp. “I was nervous about singing, I just didn’t feel comfortable with it, but at the end of the week it really helped build my confidence and come out of my shell.”

Former campers like Arteaga are celebrating rock camp Saturday with an opening reception at the South Gate Museum and Art Gallery, where a special exhibit about CRSELA will be on display through Dec. 3. The exhibit highlights a decade of CRSELA history, featuring editorial photographs of students over the years, DIY flyers, camp artwork, and archival artifacts depicting colorful moments from the children’s musical trips.

“It’s important to make sure we use this space to highlight and honor our communities,” said Jennifer Mejia, cultural arts coordinator at the South Gate Museum and Art Gallery. “What Chicxs Rockerxs SELA has been doing for 10 years needs to be celebrated and seen.”

CRSELA was born as an idea in 2013 by a non-hierarchical collective of musicians inspired by Portland’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls and the larger Girls Rock Camp organizations in the United States. CRSELA became an official non-profit organization in 2014.

Like the other camps, CRSELA’s mission was to empower young girls through musical expression. However, CRSELA sought to make the camp more accessible to low-income families, especially since other camps required high tuition fees. At CRSELA, public donations cover the program costs for each student.

“Chicxs Rockerxs is free, and when you have those fees, it turns people off, so (the rock camp) was something they definitely wanted to bring to their communities,” said Priscilla Hernandez, a CRSELA organizer.

The camp also wanted to make the experience more inclusive for historically disenfranchised neighborhoods in South Los Angeles. That appealed to Hernandez, who as a teenager in 2013 received a scholarship to attend a Girls Rock Camp in another city. She had a positive experience, but says she was aware of the glaring fact that few campers shared her journey.

“I definitely didn’t see a lot of people that looked like me there,” Hernandez said.

After reaching the age limit at Girls Rock Camp, Hernandez wondered what to do next. She heard about CRSELA and felt in tune with its values. So she decided to join in 2017 as a volunteer, teaching bass to students. She eventually became an official lead organizer, a “Comx” (pronounced cohm-ecks) as their group calls them, a gender-neutral version of the Spanish word “Comadre,” which translates to “godmother.”

“The message resonated a lot with me as I got older out of the (Girls Rock) camp, (CRSELA) wanted to incorporate a lot of things about Latinidad and pieces that were in Spanish, and that was something that wasn’t part of the other camps,” Hernandez said.

Programming at the Southeast Los Angeles camp goes beyond music education. Children participate in many artistic workshops to express their creativity, such as creating zines and screen printing. During lunch, they are visited by drag queens and local groups who perform for the children to provide them with games and entertainment.

Students entering the program are divided into two groups: the Bidi Bidis and the Bom Boms. Both charts’ nicknames pay homage to the song “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” by Tejano legend Selena Quintanilla. The Bidi Bidis are made up of children aged 8 to 11 while the Bom Boms are aged 12 to 17. When Arteaga joined CRSELA as a student in 2017 (the same year Hernandez became a volunteer), she was part of the Bidi Bidis, and even though she was joined by children younger than her, Arteaga stated that this did not diminish the experience. The group allowed her to discover her self-confidence and her power.

“The second me and my band walked on stage, I felt like I was a different person,” the former CRSELA student said. “My parents even told me that they were like, ‘Wow,’ that they had never seen me like that before. I don’t know what happened, I was just doing my thing up there.

It was a breakthrough moment for Arteaga, who subsequently felt compelled to enroll every summer. She even tried the drums, which she ended up loving so much that she never stopped playing. In 2023, she reached her final year as an eligible camper. Determined to make the most of it, she created what she says was her “best” band — a punk band with her cousin, a fellow Bom Bom — but graduating from the program was bittersweet, and Arteaga admits that she cried immediately after the show. .

“I loved the camp so much, I didn’t want this feeling to end, I’m happy to still have the opportunity to go back as a volunteer, but it broke my heart,” said she declared.

At the 10th annual camp last July, Arteaga completed her first year as a volunteer group coach with the Bidi Bidis, the same group she started with seven years ago. She hopes to recreate her camper experience for others and continue to spread the work of CRSELA in Los Angeles.

“It changed my life and had such a big impact on me. I think it’s so important to keep (CRSELA) because a lot of things are happening in the world and you never know what’s going on with someone or in your own community, it’s a way to get away from it all and a way to escape reality,” Arteaga said. “It’s the perfect place for people who want to learn more about themselves, learn more about music, get to know people. It’s an amazing place where everyone can live.