
The goal of WAM’s Local Sirens series is to address the chronic gender and racial inequity in the music industry by promoting and presenting female and gender-diverse BIPOC artists and supporting them with paid commissions to create new work and artist recording residencies in WAM’s professional studios. Only 2-3% of music producers and 12% of songwriters are women/gender-diverse and far fewer are BIPOC.
Artist Recording Residencies: provide local BIPOC women and gender-diverse artists with free recording services and mentoring. Recording Residencies include an artist stipend and 1-2 weeks of recording studio time in WAM’s studios in San Francisco with a WAM engineer. The residency culminates in a live performance at one of WAM’s Local Sirens Concerts.
Local Sirens: Women in Music Performance Series is a free, all-ages quarterly performance series that features exceptional Bay Area women and gender non-conforming musicians and performers. Local Sirens supports artists who are creating new and innovative work that is representative of the diverse communities of the Bay Area. To date, Local Sirens has presented the work of 75+ local women and gender non-conforming artists and reached over 7,500 attendees at venues including The Rickshaw Stop, PianoFight, The New Parish, and more.
Past Local Sirens performers include SIRI SEIKO, La Femme Papi, Samaria, Linda Sol, dorien blue, Chhoti Maa, The Onyx, Dioganhdih, B-Side Brujas, Rayana Jay, Rocky Rivera, Meklit, Meernaa, Tanukichan, The She’s, Lauren O’Connell, Diana Gameros, Fely Tchaco, Pamela Z, Camille Safiya, Xiomara, Chhoti Maa, SOAR, Versoul, Ruby Mountain, Meklit, Gina Madrid, Naima Shalhoub, Spellling, Pllush, Azuah, Lalin St. Juste, Rose Droll, Humid, Kohinoorgasm, Ötzi, HiScores, Ver Soul, Carly Bond, Madeline Kenney, Mariachi Feminil Orgullo Mexicano, Antique Naked Soul, Built For The Sea, Silver Shadows, Try the Pie, Mane, Sirena Victima, and DJ Mashi Mashi
Local Sirens is made possible through support from California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission, Zellerbach Family Foundation, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, and Grants for the Arts.
Apply for our Local Sirens Artist Recording Residency today! The Artist Residency program provides support for San Francisco Bay Area-based artists that identify as Black, Indigenous, or Artists of Color and as women/gender-diverse.
Upcoming
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Donate HERE! Less than 5% of the messages in our lives are created by women. WAM serves over 2,000 women and girls a year from the most vulnerable communities in California with low or no cost creative technology and STEM training: 96% low income 91% women and girls of color 30-40% high school dropout … Read more
WAM named one of SF Weekly’s Best of 2019: People & Places
WAM was named one of SF Weekly’s Best of 2019: People & Places in the “Best Hope for the Future of Music” category. Read the full roundup here.