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

The task sounds ridiculous, but Arteaga wasn’t at any ordinary camp—she was at Chicxs Rockerxs South East Los Angeles (pronounced cheek-ecks roh-kerr-ecks), where girls, trans and same-sex youth learn to play instruments, form bands with each other, write original songs and perform live for an audience during a showcase, all in just one week.

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

A photo exhibit of Chicana punk bands formed through the CRSELA program at the South Gate Museum.

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

Former campers like Arteaga are celebrating the 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 exhibition highlights a decade of CRSELA’s history, with editorial photographs of students throughout the years, DIY flyers, camp artwork and archival items representing colorful moments in the children’s musical journeys.

“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 done for 10 years should be celebrated and seen.”

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

Museum Coordinator Jennifer Mejia poses for a portrait with Chicx’s Rockerx’s memorabilia in the background at the South Gate Museum.

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

Like the other camps, CRSELA’s mission was to empower young girls through musical self-expression, but CRSELA sought to make the camp more accessible to low-income families, especially since other camps required steep tuition. At CRSELA, donations from the public cover the cost of the program for each student.

“Chicxs Rockerxs is tuition-free, and when you have these fees, it puts people off, so (rock camp) was something they definitely wanted to bring to their communities,” said Priscilla Hernandez, an organizer at CRSELA.

The camp also wanted to make the experience more inclusive of historically exempt neighborhoods throughout South LA. This 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 obvious fact that few campers shared her background.

“I definitely didn’t see a lot of people who 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 aligned with its values, so she decided to join in 2017 as a volunteer and teach bass to students. She eventually became an official core organizer, a “Comx” (pronounced cohm-ecks) as their group calls them, a gender-neutral version of the Spanish word “Comadre,” which translates to “godmother.”

Miles Recio, from left, Priscilla Hernandez, Angie Barrera and Vikki Gutman pose at the South Gate Museum.

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

“The message really resonated with me as I aged 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 other camps,” Hernandez said.

Programming for the camp in South East LA goes beyond music education. The children participate in a wide range of artistic workshops to express their creativity, such as zine making and screen printing. During lunch they are visited by drag queens and local bands who perform for the children to provide play and entertainment.

Students entering the program are divided into two groups: Bidi Bidis and Bom Boms. The names of the two classifications pay homage to the song “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” by Tejano legend Selena Quintanilla. The Bidi Bidis are made up of children ages 8 to 11 while the Bom Boms are ages 12 to 17. When Arteaga joined CRSELA as a student in 2017 (the same year Hernandez volunteered), she was part of the Bidi Bidis, and although she received accompanied by children younger than her, Arteaga said it didn’t diminish the experience. The band allowed her to discover her confidence and power.

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

Miles Recio poses for a portrait with Chicxs Rockerxs memorabilia at the South Gate Museum.

(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)

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

“I loved the camp so much, I didn’t want that feeling to end, I’m glad I still get the opportunity to go back as a volunteer, but it was very heartbreaking for me,” she said.

At the 10th annual camp last July, Arteaga completed her first year as a volunteer band 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 CRSELA’s work in LA

“It changed my life and it’s had such a big impact on me. I feel like it’s so important to keep (CRSELA) going because there’s a lot going on in the world and you just never know what’s going on in someone’s home or in their own community, it’s a way to get away from all that and a way to escape reality, Arteaga said. “This is the perfect place for people who want to learn more about themselves, learn more about music, get to know people. It’s a great place for everyone to be.”