geoff: The pandemic forced a lot
of musicians to have positive on
their careers but some artist of
that time away from touring to
create at home.
Special correspondent
Christopher booker sent out with
the singer santigold about
defining genres and addressing
racial inequity.
♪♪
correspondent: Sitting somewhere
between punk, electronic and pop
the music of Santi white, better
known as santigold is difficult
to define.
>> I'm taking no drama, only
answer to your honor.
Correspondent: While it might
defy categories, in a streaming
world where tens of thousands of
new songs are uploaded everyday
her voice and unique sound is a
reminder that in our digital
world, it is still possible to
offer something fresh.
>> I think that artists are kind
of like mirrors to culture and
so we what we write and what we
create is a way that culture can
see itself from different
perspectives and in a way that
we can help progress culture and
move things forward and sort of
be bridges to what is next.
♪♪
>> ♪♪ What I am searching for ♪♪
correspondent: White has been
constructing these bridges since
her 2008 breakout santogold, an
album that from its first track
to its last, offered a steady
assault on musical stereotypes
and tight gas.
But the genre bending album
almost didn't happen.
>> I met with an a&r guy and he
was like, yeah, this seems
confused and it doesn't really
make sense, and you're all over
the place.
It was nothing that you could
have called it that could have
fit because it was so mixed up,
but it was everything I was.
And I feel like I opened a lot
of doors for all artists, and
particularly artists of color
who are trying to do something
outside of the little tiny box
that was allotted for them.
Correspondent: That you have to
be a rapper.
You have to be an r&b singer.
>> Rapper, r&b, yeah and even
when I came out, they were like
in all the press was like rapper
santigold, r&b singer santigold.
And I was like, really?
Ok.
Correspondent: In the years
since, she's only solidified her
idiosyncratic stature.
♪♪
but in 2019, white says, her
creative firehose started to run
dry.
>> I had some songs that I had
started, just like little bits
of ideas, and I went in my
studio and I said, I'm gonna
write some songs.
Nothing.
There was nothing, nothing.
I had no lyrics, no ideas about
what I was going to write about.
Then the world flipped upside
down.
♪♪
correspondent: Like so many of
us during that spring of 2020,
white found herself forced to
stay still.
Holed at home with her husband
and three children, she says the
change wasn't easy.
>> I was only one in the house
that could cook.
Only one in the house like a
deep clean, only one.
I wasn't the only wiping butts,
one but we were literally like
me.
I mean, two year Olds, just
turned two year old and I just
felt like I was drowning in
that, but then also outside of
the house, you know, black
people getting killed day after
day, the riots were happening,
the protests, wildfires in
California, it was just like, it
was too much.
♪♪
correspondent: But slowly, white
says, she started to find time
returning for small sessions in
her backyard studio.
>> Finally, I made it out to the
back house and I just.
I never wrote lyrics faster.
You know, it was just like I had
it was my opportunity to take a
moment to feel, to process, it's
cathartic just to finally get a
chance to, like, be with myself,
be with my thoughts, be with my
feelings, and also a way to
-- feelings.
Correspondent: This flood of
activity result and the album
spirituals out this week.
It echoes today's major issues
especially racial equality.
, Do you feel a certain pressure
to respond to the world and
what's happening in the world?
>> I grew up listening to music
that was topical music, so to
me, that is what music was.
You know, as a child, my father
was listening to fela Kuti and
burning spear and Marvin Gaye
and Nina Simone.
I come from that legacy of
musicians where it's like,
that's what we do.
Correspondent: She's also
tapping into this legacy in the
visual work.
For the song, shake recreates
one of the most horrific yet
iconic scenes in the civil
rights movement of the 1960's.
>> ♪♪ You got to shake.
>> I had been collecting images
for this project and I was just
so emotionally impacted by the
images of the people, the civil
rights protesters getting hosed
and like pinned against a wall
and and, you know, so many of
them were like kids and
teenagers and young people, I
mean, the song was, for me very
much about human resilience and
about just moving through the
challenges, the trauma, the
hardship.
It was very fitting to just put
myself in front of a hose and to
try to keep moving through it,
because that's what generations
of women and generations of
black women, generations of
black people have had to do.
The reason I call my record
spirituals is because the Negro
spirituals were a way to
transcend people's circumstances
and experience joy and freedom
when there was none visibly
around them.
Music has always been a place
for transcendence and for
fighting and moving forward.
That is why I make music, you
know, so that what the music
does for me, I can do for other
people.
♪♪
correspondent: For pbs's
weekend, I am Christopher