Vaughan St. John Bosco Catholic Elementary School student releases first single

Ava Scaccia is a member of girl pop rock group Girl Pow-r

Yorkregion.com
December 11, 2018
Simone Joseph

As a little girl, Ava Scaccia used to dress up in pink princess dresses and play with Barbies.

Grabbing her toy microphone, she would serenade guests to her Woodbridge home, belting out Britney Spears.

Her parents tried to introduce her to different hobbies.

“Soccer, swimming and gymnastics. We did it all,” Ava’s mother Lori Scaccia says. Girl guides? Tennis? She didn’t like any of it …with one exception.

“The only thing that stuck with her – vocal, singing all the time.”

Lori signed Ava up for singing lessons at age six and piano at age eight.

Now the 13-year-old student at St. John Bosco Catholic Elementary School has just released her first single You Don’t Really Need To Change.

 Sitting in Woodbridge’s Chorus Music where she takes music lessons, she explains her song: “I want to spread a positive message, to send the message you don’t have to change.”

A song excerpt: “And I’m scared and you’re nervous and nobody’s perfect I kinda like you that way”.

Two years ago, at age 11, she wrote another song called You Don’t Know Me with producer and songwriter Neel Dani, a teacher at Chorus Music.

The song’s inspiration came from a Grade 5 experience when Ava was teased by other girls at recess, she says.

They were making rude comments and if she tried to protest, they would laugh. She was hurt, not feeling good at all.

She remembers going into her bedroom and humming a melody she had in her head, then adding words to the melody.

An excerpt:

“‘Cause I believe in someone who likes me for me but you know that I feel alone and you can’t tell what I want.

You don’t know me anymore...”

Writing the song served a purpose.

“It made me feel better because I was letting it all out,“ she says.

Her singing career has had challenges.

A few years ago, Chorus Music asked her to sing at a Christmas fundraiser. Ava remembers singing her first song perfectly. The next song was Santa Baby. Halfway through, she blanked on the words. They stopped the music and played it over again. She forgot the lyrics again. She cried afterwards and vowed to herself this would never happen again.

She was 10.

Since then, she has always tried to be extra-prepared and this makes her more confident, she says.

Today, Ava is pretty far removed from that little girl wearing princess dresses and belting out tunes.

Looking back, she realizes she was gender stereotyping as a child when she thought being a girl meant dressing in pink and playing with Barbie. “As you grow up you realize that’s not how it is.”

 Today, she is a fan of hoodies, sweatpants and sneakers.

“I like to be myself, act the way I want to.”

Her goals today are simple: “I definitely want to write more music … I want to put my music out there. I want to make songs people can listen to and enjoy.”

Visit avascaccia.com or the site of her girl pop rock group, www.girl-pow-r.com.