THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Boden Sandstrom, Ph.D.

“I have been an activist since I became aware of the injustices in the world particularly the oppression of women, girls and lesbians. I started Woman Sound in order to provide clear, inexpensive sound for as many movement rallies and events as possible. My priority was Women’s Music. When it was time to close the doors of Woman Sound, I worked on a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology so that I could teach the next generations what I had learned in these struggles for freedom and the role that music played.”

A pioneering audio engineer who helped define the sound of the women’s music movement in America beginning in the 1970s. A founding member of Female Liberation in Boston, MA. Helped create The Second Wave, a journal, in 1971. Founder, along with Casse Culver, of Women Sound. Reproductive Justice Taskforce. Social and Environmental Justice Committee at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Southern Delaware (UUSD).

Interviewed by Mary Jean Collins, VFA Historian, June 2025

Photo 1. Boden (right) with Delpfine Welch of Boston Female Liberation selling Second Wave magazines at Women’s Liberation Day, 1971. Photo 2. Boden at the mix board at the West Coast Women’s Music and Comedy Festival outside of Santa Barbara in 1985 (Photo by Deborah Jenkins). Photo 3. Boden at the ‘Hands Off!’ rally in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, April 5, 2025.