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All-female singing group CAMM is more than just a music ensemble. The Syracuse-based quartet is also trying to advocate for change in the community.

CAMM is made up of four Black women. Despite being a few months old, the group has already performed at three events this year. The group sings a variety of genres including R&B and gospel music and has performed at events such as a Syracuse Police Accountability and Reform Coalition rally at City Hall, as well as the “Say Their Names” memorial on Oct. 14 at the Bethany Baptist Church. The group’s most recent performance was Sunday at the ACR Health First Frost Walk.

“What I really wanted to do is bring together powerful influential Black artists from around the area who I knew were going to be unapologetic and proud in every single thing they had to say,” said CAMM member Cathy Butler. “I’m just so grateful that they were willing to embark even on this one day together, let alone this entire journey that we seem to have cultivated together and taken on.”

The group formed on Aug. 1 when a friend of Butler’s asked her to sing at a rally near City Hall. Butler then contacted three women she knew who are involved in the city’s performing arts community.

CAMM performed at the “Say Their Names” event alongside the Syracuse Black Artists Collective at Bethany Baptist Church on Oct. 14. Courtesy of Eden Strachan

Butler attended college with member Alice Queen, and met Michele Lindor while working together in a performing arts show last December. Martikah Williams and Butler connected through Facebook earlier this year after both being invited to a Zoom talk to speak about racial disparities in the Syracuse theater community.

The four women got together and performed at the SPAARC rally. After their performance, the women decided to form the group that same day. The group then came up with the name CAMM, an acronym of the four women’s first names.

The band members have musical and artistic backgrounds and are also activists. Each has attended peaceful protests and rallies in and around Syracuse.

CAMM has been meeting weekly, typically on Monday or Friday nights for a couple of hours. During their rehearsals, the group begins by talking about social justice, what is going on in their own lives and what is going on in the local community. Once the women move into the singing portion of the meeting, they go over prior work, then go through pieces that they are working on.

“There is a structure to it, and then there’s tangents in between the structure. We have a good time. We spend a lot of our rehearsal laughing,” Williams said.

So far, CAMM has its own rendition of the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by J. Rosamond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson, along with their own cover of “When You Believe” by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. They also perform music from the hit musical “Hamilton.” Their music is from a lot of powerful women and the group mainly sings “power anthems,” Williams said.

Each member of CAMM plays a different role in the band. Williams is the resident soprano, and Lindor is the resident tenor. Butler is fluid in her abilities and has a wide range, and Queen describes herself as a “storyteller.”

“I’m very much a storyteller, so the way I do music is tell stories and we’re able to bring it together,” Queen said. “I realize our blend and our performance becomes a little tighter, and a lot more polished.”

The four band members at the SPAARC rally at city hall. Left to right: Martikah Williams, Alice Queen, Michele Lindor, Cathy Butler. Courtesy of Michele Lindor

The group works and blends together well, but they are still figuring out their sound and exploring when making up songs and putting their rhythms together, Queen said. The group is finding out more about their voice, as both singers and as women.

“We’re learning about who we are and how we all mesh together, and how we introduce ourselves to the world is very important to us,” Queen said. “Learning about ourselves is very interesting,”

A major priority for CAMM is to show up and be activists for their community. Every time they show up, they are pointing to the fact that Black women are disrespected and underappreciated as a marginalized group in the United States, Williams said.

“Black women of all types can love each other and appreciate each other and express each other,” Williams said. “This is an example of what we want to see in our community, but everywhere else that we go and travel to.”

Published on October 25, 2020 at 8:33 pm

racramer@syr.edu