Robert Santelli coming to Calgary’s National Music Centre Oct. 4

Echoes Across the Border teaches visitors about the influence of Canadian artists on the music scene of the 1960s. Ian White speaks to an organizer.

It was a golden era in music and Canadians were very much at the centre of it.

“The West Coast was really happening back in the late sixties.” Robert Santelli told CTV News.

“Canadians – Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, others, – made their contributions, so it was really an international contribution. It was an international scene.”

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Santelli, the executive director of the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music, will be at the National Music Centre on Oct. 4 for Echoes Across the Border: The Northern Connection.

He will be part of panel discussions along with the screening of Laurel Canyon, a 2020 documentary that chronicled the late 1960s/early 1970s music scene in the area just outside Los Angeles.

The event is the first collaboration between Calgary’s National Music Centre and the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music, which will open to the public next year.

Santelli first met Springsteen in 1968 and has written extensively on him.

“We’ve been friends and I’ve been fortunate enough to interview him over the years,” Santelli said.

“Now, of course, he’s entrusted me with his legacy, which is the biggest task and the most nervous task that I have in my career.”