A movement empowering women and gender-expansive music producers

We’d love to get to know you better! Gender Amplified embraces passionate and driven producers, songwriters, audio engineers, and everyone in between aiming to build a more equitable future in the music industry. There are many ways to get involved!

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Join our team as a volunteer
Apply for our Ctrl Room Series production camps

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*Our applications are rolling, so you are always welcome to apply to be considered for our next camp.

In Fall 2006, our founder Ebonie Smith was a rising senior at Barnard College. Just returning from a semester abroad in Cameroon while working in Africa at recording studios, Ebonie had a final year of academic rigor and the looming 100-page senior thesis requirement.

During this time, Ebonie purchased some music production equipment and spent hours in the dorm room between classes learning how to produce music and recording her friends. Ebonie thought… ‘If only I could just do this. I wish that I could produce music for my coursework requirements.’ In the wake of her frustration, what followed was a bright idea: ‘I could write my senior thesis on music production.’

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Ebonie immediately enrolled in the only two music production classes at Columbia – her enthusiasm for classes instantly re-established, and started to learn as much history on music production as she could. Focused on hip hop, she started to learn much about the cultural significance of music technologies and their influence on the development of hip hop music - identifying the names of several key male producers over and over again, and never coming across any names of female music producers. This seemed odd.

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After consulting her thesis advisor Kim Hall about this issue, Ebonie proposed for Barnard College to create a conference called Gender Amplified: Women and Technological Innovation in Hip Hop. She felt that women’s lack of visibility in hip hop music production was both an academic and a feminist discourse. Given this, Barnard College seemed to be the perfect place to spearhead the Gender Amplified movement.

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Planning an academic conference, producing music and writing a senior thesis simultaneously was no walk in the park, but so many wonderful partners came on board to help bring the vision to fruition. Tachelle Wilks (founder, Femmixx.com), The Barnard Center for Research on Women, The Africana Studies Program, and Dean Vivian Taylor (campus coordinator, The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship) all provided a tremendous support system. We accomplished much with this initial event in 2007. However, the movement continues on.

Welcome to this wonderful world of sound making! We’re excited to have you join us! While our Ctrl Room Series camps are currently geared toward up-and-coming producers rather than beginners, we are working on offering more educational programming - stay tuned! You are always welcome to reach out to info@genderamplified.org to get plugged in.

At the moment, Gender Amplified, Inc. is based in New York City and primarily hosts events there. However, we plan to expand our impact to new locations such as Los Angeles and London. If you’re interested in Gender Amplified coming to your city, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

Many of our events and camps are entirely free to attendees, and it’s made possible by the generous donations from our partners and community! Your funds help to make this all possible.

Our allies across the gender spectrum are welcome to support our mission as key partners to impact change in the music industry. Sign up for our newsletter and come to our events! If you’re a producer or engineer, become a mentor or volunteer with our team! Email us at info@genderamplified.org to learn more.

If you are chosen to be a part of our camps, there are no costs associated with your attendance. The experience is free for producers. We also do not expect to own any of the rights to the music you create in the camps. You will remain the sole owner of all the intellectual property that you create at our camps.