How might songs, like John Lennon's "Imagine" or Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the wind", offer ways to explore alternative ways of being in the world, to challenge the status quo? How might these songs become springboards for original pieces that capture students' ideas about world issues? In this article, I observe what happens when selected strategies from an on-going curricular writing project utilizing a social justice framework are presented to a class of New York City fifth graders. I draw from student-created songs, instrumental compositions, written and video-taped narratives to document ways in which these elementary school students embrace ideals of social responsibility through music-making. (Contains 1 note.)