Rebekka Fisher Observare

Rebekka Fisher is unquestionably the resourceful type. When the Minneapolis jazz/funk musician found herself being treated as an ornament in a mostly-male band, she quit and formed her own band. Puzzled by the low number of female instrumentalists in the music industry, she started a networking organization for women artists and began publishing a newsletter. And just last July, after having a hard time getting a gig at a local club, she again took action. She teamed up with other female artists to hold a benefit concert there that wound up attracting over 300 people and raising $750 for the Family Violence Network. Fisher's strong sense of purpose has been evident since childhood when she began playing piano at age nine. She was the third of four girls. She inherited her father's gift of creativity - Ed Fischer's editorial cartoons are syndicated in over 100 newspapers nationwide and have won him many awards. (He altered the spelling of his last name for FischerToons to avoid being confused with another Ed Fisher.) When Fisher was 13 years old, she heard Carole King's 'Tapestry' album and knew what she wanted to do with her life. 'I also listened to Melissa Manchester,' she remembers. 'She has incredible vocal power. I saw her in concert. A couple of times during her show, she didn't even use a microphone, and everyone could still hear her.' The teenage Fisher was anxious to put her dream into action and tried to form a band. Unfortunately, she couldn't find the same commitment in her friends and had to settle for songwriting on her own and keeping a catalog of her work. The creative outlet also became a form of therapy when her parents began having difficulties in their marriage (they've since divorced). She took up guitar and drums and channelled her pain into her music. By the time she was fifteen, she wound up playing the piano at a resort where she'd taken a part-time job washing dishes. She abandoned the idea of forming her own band and joined an already established one. The format? Heavy metal. 'Yes, I played keyboards in a heavy metal band,' she laughs. 'I really wasn't sure what I was doing there!' She spent her adolescence moving from one band to another. Her first real gig, in keeping with the unusual turn her budding career was taking, was at a deaf school. 'Actually, it went over great,' she says. 'They danced to the vibrations of the music that they felt through the floor. The only glitch was when they started slow dancing to our cover of 'Wipeout.' I tried to tell them that it was a fast song, but they couldn't hear me!' Fisher went on to attend the University of Minnesota and earn a degree in Composition. As she began meeting other musicians and jamming with them, she noticed a difference in the professional behavior between men and women. 'When I'm jamming with women, they're more cordial and polite,' she says. 'I know it's a generalization, but so many times I've seen women jamming and saying, 'You do a solo,' 'No, you solo, it's your turn.' Meanwhile the song is almost over! Men I've jammed with, on the other hand, are more aggressive. They'll play right over you.' Fisher was initially intimated by the more aggressive playing style of the male musicians but still preferred jamming with them. Her determination to hold her own in a mostly-male jam led her to practice harder and sharpen her keyboard skills. Eventually, her more aggressive style of playing won her a nomination for Keyboardist of the Year by the Minnesota Music Academy. Unfortunately, stronger technical skills didn't solve all of her difficulties. 'When you're the only girl in the band, it's hard to feel like a part of the group no matter how well you play,' she says. 'I was left out of the 'guy talk,' which is an important part of band bonding. They just didn't want to talk that way with me around.' Fisher finally gave up the attempts at bonding when she formed the Rebekka Fisher Band. 'I'm more of the boss than a friend,' she says of her relationship with the three men who make up the rest of the band, 'and that's probably for the best.'