A Sixties Scrapbook, Volume 14 #1

Changing the World with My Guitar

In 1968 Paris blew and so did Columbia University. Vietnam raged. Tanks entered Prague. In Toronto, Rochdale College opened--O eighteen-storey palace of sin! I was twenty-two.

It was a great time to be young. We really thought we could change the world. We were naïve, but in our naïveté we threw ourselves with passion and intensity into the biggest issues of the time. The pictures don't show the crackle of energy and optimism, of being a part, a significant part, of something real and new and sweeping. What we did mattered.

So did the music. It went everywhere with us. Phil Ochs on the picket line, Sergeant Pepper back home. The Jefferson Airplane sang, "We are all outlaws in the eyes of Amerika," and we were. We rolled, and sang, our own.

So I thought, in 1970, if I have a gift, it is to take ideas and give them a kind of folk expression. I could see (undoubtedly with the aid of drugs) a useful, socially responsible role for myself: I would take my guitar and make up songs to sing while changing the world.

And as it turns out, that is precisely what I've done. The world has proved harder to budge than I thought and, as a career, I cannot wholeheartedly recommend folksinging. But the fact is, I have done, and continue to do, what I chose in the sixties. Myth aside, so have many of us. And for all our defeats by the rich and powerful--who are always stronger--the world is the better for our efforts.

Bob Bossin is a Vancouver folksinger and one of the founders of Stringband.