The Guitar and Accessories Marketing Association (GAMA) is a trade association comprised of guitar products manufacturers and distributors. Since its inception in 1933, the organization has worked to expand the guitar industry.
In 1995, GAMA’s started to focus heavily on guitar education. GAMA and its partners developed the Teaching Guitar Workshops (TGW) to train school music educators to start classroom guitar programs. Since the program’s inception, thousands of school music educators have been trained at our Workshops, and have reached an estimated half a million children.
GAMA also provided long-term funding to Guitars in the Classroom (GITC). The program teaches non-music educators to use guitar to teach curriculum such as history, mathematics, and language arts.
GAMA was founded in 1933 with seven members to encourage the exchange of ideas and production information within the American guitar industry. During the 1960s, association activities expanded with programs designed to stimulate consumer interest in the guitar as a hobby and to improve the educational market for guitar.
In the 1970s GAMA took an active interest in classroom guitar programs. Studies conducted in conjunction with the American String Teachers Association indicated that about 25 percent of public schools offered guitar as part of the regular music curriculum.
