The benefit concert is one of those great musical hybrids, like rap metal or the keytar. There may be no better way to turn people on to a cause than with a concert, and no better way to bring people to a concert than to tie it to a cause.
Following in this tradition is the GoGirlsMusicFest, offering plenty of music and endless good intentions. The nationwide series of shows kicked off with dates in Santa Monica and Venice, and continues on Oct. 15 at the Liquid Lounge in Long Beach, bringing together an eclectic mix of artists while spreading awareness for maternity homes, plus a whole lot of girl power.
“I always say, “˜A spoonful of music makes the awareness go down,'” said Kelly Zirbes, front woman of Kelly’s Lot and one of the local coordinators of the Long Beach show. “Music is the international language, it’s the international way to get to people’s hearts, and to get information to them.”
The music festival is the premier annual event for GoGirlsMusic.com, which, when it was started by Madalyn Sklar in 1996, had little to do with charity work. Sklar was a struggling musician at the time; she started the Web site to connect with other female musicians, and to hone her developing HTML skills. The site quickly grew into something much bigger than Sklar had expected, into something of a proto-social network.
“I thought this could be a way to connect with other musicians,” Sklar said. “The first year or so I was seeking out the musicians and looking for them myself, but after about a year people were finding me. It got to the point where I didn’t have to spend my evenings finding female musicians, they were finding me.”
The first GoGirlsMusicFest was organized in 2000, in 11 cities across the country. Since 2001, the festival has focused on one united cause each year. The current cause, maternity homes, is an important one for GoGirlsMusic, and especially for Evonne Rivera, one the festival’s three national coordinators.
“Maternity homes are unique organizations, because they’re not just shelters for women, they’re a place for women who are in a crisis pregnancy and find themselves with nowhere to go,” Rivera said. “They have classes on parenting, prenatal classes, life skills, they have requirements while they’re living there ““ chores, counseling. When (the women) leave, they’re ready to be strong, independent individuals as mothers, or just as women, hopefully not to ever come back to that situation again.”
Rivera herself spent time in Santa Monica’s Harvest Home, and now dedicates much of her energy to spreading awareness about such institutions; she helped the Harvest Home last year to put together their annual fundraiser. A few months ago, during the planning phase of the GoGirlsMusicFest, Zirbes, who has long been friends with both Rivera and Sklar, realized she had found a perfect match.
Soon after Zirbes introduced her two friends to each other, Sklar dedicated the 2009 GoGirlsMusicFest to maternity homes and placed Rivera in charge of finding a home in each concert’s city. Here was a chance for Rivera to do on a national level what she’d already been doing locally, to effect large-scale change for a deeply personal cause.
“If anyone finds themselves pregnant and they don’t know where to go, there are always people willing to help,” Rivera said. “That’s coming from someone who was once there, and was able to benefit from a maternity home and to now be in a place to give it back and be stable and be living a happy and healthy life.”
Rivera will also perform at the Long Beach show, along with Kelly’s Lot and several other groups from the GoGirls community. They represent a range of genres, but the common thread, Zirbes said, is a strong singer-songwriter element.
This will be her band’s sixth straight performance at the Long Beach concert, but Zirbes senses that special things may come of bringing together this year’s coordinators.
“This is really about Madalyn doing GoGirls and Evonne bringing this wonderful charity to them, and I think with those two women, you can’t do wrong,” Zirbes said. “They’re two of the most positive, powerful, and unselfish people I know. Putting those two together, I think you’ve got a winner.”
Sklar, for her part, would like someday to see a major national conference on women in music. If the progression of GoGirls thus far is any indication, from a small Web site she made for fun to an ever-growing network with a national festival, her dream may not be far off.
“Our mission is to promote, support, and empower our members,” Sklar said. “We’re always trying to find ways to keep doing that, but on a bigger level.”