
Detroit DJ Whodat talks house music, Black women artistry
Clip: Season 9 Episode 32 | 5m 28sVideo has Closed Captions
Detroit DJ Whodat talks about being an African American woman in the music industry.
Lifelong Detroiter Terri McQueen, popularly known as DJ Whodat, is a luminary in electronic music. One Detroit contributor Chien-An Yuan caught up with McQueen to talk about her love for house music, being an African American woman in the music industry, and what motivates her to create the soulful, expansive mixes and eclectic productions that make up her unique sound
Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback
One Detroit is a local public television program presented by Detroit PBS

Detroit DJ Whodat talks house music, Black women artistry
Clip: Season 9 Episode 32 | 5m 28sVideo has Closed Captions
Lifelong Detroiter Terri McQueen, popularly known as DJ Whodat, is a luminary in electronic music. One Detroit contributor Chien-An Yuan caught up with McQueen to talk about her love for house music, being an African American woman in the music industry, and what motivates her to create the soulful, expansive mixes and eclectic productions that make up her unique sound
Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback
How to Watch One Detroit
One Detroit is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(upbeat music) (singer singing indistinctly) (people chattering) - Becoming an artist takes a lot of work.
For me, actually, the beginnings of it is learning to become an artist, believing that I was an artist.
I never considered myself an artist.
I think early on, I was trying to help other people with the things that they were doing and understanding things that needed to be done and helping them navigate through things.
And over time I just realized like, you really have to take care of these things like a job.
(upbeat music) I started to understand promotion better when I heard people talking about visibility.
So by the time I did movement, there's not many people that look like me that do movement.
There's usually just a certain few.
So understanding that like people need to see that because that's not something that I had seen when I was younger, and probably after movement, I started seeing more people that look like me and they're like, "Yo, I seen you here, I heard you here.
I had heard about you, but now I'm seeing you more.
And you inspire me to do it.
It lets me know that I can do it.
When I get frustrated it's like, well she got here, then I know I can get there.
I'm just gonna have to like work through whatever I need to work through to get there."
And it's important.
(upbeat music) (upbeat music) Being from Detroit and making music is we stick to what we know.
This is what I'm doing and how I'm going to do it.
And I'm not changing my mind.
I don't care what you think.
I don't care what you like.
I don't care what you don't like.
When you're creating art, you're not necessarily thinking about like, yeah, everyone's gonna love this or like this.
You're just getting your creative output out.
It's what people need to do.
But when the money comes into it you're like, oh man, I might lose my livelihood or I might lose my house or I might, well I already lost my house, I don't really care, I have nothing to lose.
Because I've already been through that.
What else you got?
And that's a Detroit thing.
People getting laid off or losing their job and plants closing and somebody being on drugs or somebody dying at an early age or them just having a hard life growing up or you getting like in a car accident or just whatever.
It's just like our makeup, like yo, I don't really care.
Like I'm working to get here and this is where I'm going.
You're either in it for the ride or you can get out.
That's it.
My new toy, my first, maybe second mode, because this actually is the first one, the work stack, but you had to put together like a little kid.
So probably mostly bass lines with this and experimentation.
So we made the main bass line on, don't know from this sequential, but we have no idea what patch it was.
It's somewhere in here, but that's fine because that song's finished.
I wanted to make it timeless.
(upbeat music) - If you're a good person and you have a good heart, most things are probably just coming to you.
For a long time, I felt undeserving of the things that were coming to me because I hadn't been doing this for a long time, but my mom was like, she explained to me, you have to understand, you never look at all the things that you do for other people, and you've always done that, and you've always been that person.
So everything that you have coming to you, those are just things that you have already done.
Knowing that, I understand like, well this needs to be seen so that people can start understanding like, okay, you can do this too, and you can get over there.
You can be where I am.
African American opera tenor, trailblazer George Shirley
Video has Closed Captions
African American opera tenor George Shirley reflects on his trailblazing music career. (6m 51s)
The history, influence of African American religious music
Video has Closed Captions
Religious leaders from Detroit explore the history and influence of Black religious music. (7m 47s)
Things to do around Detroit this weekend: February 7, 2025
Video has Closed Captions
Black History Month events, upcoming performances and more happening this weekend. (1m 58s)
Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipOne Detroit is a local public television program presented by Detroit PBS