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Ebonnie Rowe

helping women take their place in Canada's urban music industry

YWCA Toronto women of distinction award 2005:
arts & entertainment

Ebonnie Rowe is a savvy business woman with an unusual mission. She is the founder and CEO of PhemPhat Productions, an all-female production company dedicated to showcasing young women interested in urban music. She is also co-founder and former director of the highly successful mentoring program, Each One, Teach One. She receives this year’s Women of Distinction Award for the Arts & Entertainment.

Tired of watching as talented young women were dismissed, disrespected and disenfranchised by Canada's often sexist and male-dominated music industry, Ms Rowe decided to act. In 1995 she founded PhemPhat to foster growth, education and promotion of women not only as artists, but also as DJs, producers, engineers, managers, record label owners and promoters.

The company has produced a series of events to showcase women artists including the Honey Jam, Women on Wax DJ series, seminars on the urban music sector and a poetry/spoken work event, Brown Girls in Da Ring.

PhemPhat produces the annual Honey Jam Magazine and in 2002, with the support of Universal Music, the company produced "Honey Drops", Canada’s first all female urban CD compilation. The annual Honey Jam event has ignited the careers of many Canadian women in the urban music scene, including Grammy award winner Nelly Furtado.

In 1992, Ms Rowe and two colleagues launched Each One, Teach One mentoring program to offer Black youth examples of successful Black role models. The program pairs youth between the ages of 14 and 24 with professionals working in various trades and occupations and has inspired hundreds of Black youth to chase their dreams.

Major events include the Annual Youth Day celebration and book drive, career development workshops, talent shows, young entrepreneurs’ showcase and career fair. A quarterly newsletter profiles youth and professionals involved in the program. In the wake of the program’s success, two smaller mentor collectives, Sista 2 Sista and Brother 2 Brother, formed in the late 1990s.

Ms Rowe’s mentoring and entertainment industry work has won her numerous awards, including the Special Achievement Award from the Urban Music Association of Canada in 2000 and the Volunteerism Award from the Province of Ontario in 1997, She has been profiled in Who’s Who in Black Canada and Chatelaine Magazine’s Who’s Who of Canadian Women and received the Toronto Sun Woman on the Move Award, November, 1995.

Moving Canada’s women of colour from being stereotyped as decorations, cheerleaders, and groupies to men’s accomplishments, Ebonnie Rowe and the artists she produces are showing the world that sisters really are doing it for themselves.

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