Earlier this year, I blogged about discovering the musician AURORA. Whelp, I was just introduced to another amazing musician by my brother. Once again, she’s been out there being musical for years now and this was the first I had heard of her. Although, in my defense, I don’t follow music as closely as my brother, who is a musician, and he had somehow missed her, as well. (We commiserate regularly about our age, including not being able to keep up with pop culture. It takes work to do what came so naturally when we were younger.)
The musician my brother introduced me to is Santigold and he specifically shared her video for the song “L.E.S Artistes” [https://youtu.be/ciJDA0tcQfs?si=VOJ72pJNPsGS3HTk]
I’m going to embed the video from YouTube, but I don’t know how long this will remain active within my blog, so I’ve put a link above (not that the link won’t rot away, too, but it’s the best I can do).
I was immediately hooked and, as with AURORA, I had to find more of her music.
Her song and video for “Disparate Youth” [https://youtu.be/mIMMZQJ1H6E?si=h72Lo-_VVXS4Ae4_] reminds me of a Duran Duran song. Her music has an art house quality, which is how I heard Nick Rhodes, keyboardist for Duran Duran, describe his band’s music before. Santigold’s music is innovative and defies easy classification.
I watched her Tiny Desk Concert [https://youtu.be/IG76Rf28MQA?si=w5uBaz0fCJ5LtmOc], which I highly recommend because she shares a bit of her history along with her music. She started out on the punk scene and does a bit of head-banging during the concert. She also said that within the industry, the expectation is that Black artists will perform hip-hop and she has defied that expectation.
I’m glad Santigold has decided to go her own way with music. It will be fun to explore what she has created.
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Have you heard any new or new-to-you musicians that you’ve enjoyed lately? Please share in the comments. Let’s help each other discover music through good old-fashioned word-of-mouth, rather than relying on algorithms.