last year champlain towers south, a condominium in surfside, florida, collapsed in the middle of the night. 98 people were killed. more than a year later, no one knows why the 40-year-old building fell. >> i've been investigating failures for over 40 years, and this particular investigation i can say is one of the most complex and challenging that has ever been undertaken. the horrors of the holocaust were met with various forms of resistance. some insurgents fought back by smuggling food and weapons into

jewish ghettos. tonight, we'll tell you about a very different kind of resistance group, made up of mostly writers and intellectuals living in what is now lithuania. there members risked death smuggling artwork, books and rare manuscripts, hiding them in underground bnkers. oh, wow. 80 years later we found troves of hidden material still being discovered. ♪ take a listen, as we did, to sona jobarteh as she plays the kora. with its 21 strings played by just four fingers, two on each hand, it has a sound both foreign and familiar. i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm bill whitaker. >> i'm anderson cooper.

>> i'm sharyn alfonsi. >> i'm jon wertheim. >> i'm scott pelley, those stories and more tonight on "60 minutes". ls, when people needed it most. but there's still work to be done. thank you, claire. this year, we'd like to invite you back to jersey mike's for another special weekend. come in november 19th and 20th, where 20% of all sales will be donated to feeding america, helping families in need. together, we always make a difference. in a recent clinical study, patients using salonpas patch reported reductions in pain severity, using less or a lot less oral pain medicines. and improved quality of life. that's why we recommend salonpas. it's good medicine.

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talk to a financial professional about life insurance and retirement solutions with pacific life. this past week hurricane nicole, a category 1 storm, forced residents in more than a dozen condominiums near daytona beach from their homes because officials declared the buildings unsafe. in september, hurricane ian caused more than $40 billion in damage across florida. to cover the bill, it's widely expected insurance premiums are going to go up in the sunshine state. another disaster was already threatening to make housing

unaffordable for many. last year, champlain towers south, 40-year-old condominium in the city of surfside collapsed the middle of the night. 98 people were killed. more than a year later no one knows why the building fell. we wondered why it was taking so long to find an answer. tonight, you'll hear from the engineers leading the local and federal investigations and see how the surfside mystery is impacting florida condo owners. this is surveillance video from a nearby building. look just beyond the pool. the middle of the condo collapses, disappearing into dust. seconds later, the oceanside wing seems to melt to the ground. it was about 1:30 in the morning. >> i am sound asleep. and i hear this awful noise. i didn't know what it was. it felt like a mountain coming down.

and two seconds later all i remember is literally being thrown out of my bed and landing in front of the bed. >> reporter: raysa rodriguez lived in the ninth floor in the part of the building that somehow remained standing. >> there's a small balcony, so i stepped out. and my brain just couldn't compute what i was looking at. i said to myself, where's the building? screaming at this time, where's the building? >> reporter: the elevators were gone, the stairwells clogged with concrete. and there's no way for you to get out of the building? >> there's no way for me to get out. i snapped into, this is the situation. i'm terrified. i don't want to die tonight. >> reporter: so rodriguez started navigating a way down, helping an elderly neighbor through dark hallways and over the debris and stairwell. it took more than two hours before they reached a floor low enough to be rescued with a ladder. today, this is all that's left of the building, a concrete scar

in the ground. the names of the victims are listed on a fence that surrounds the site. it includes retirees and young families. >> people went to sleep that night. in the safest spot in their world is your home, your bedroom. it wasn't the safest spot in the world. >> reporter: what answers do you >> what answers do i want? i want the truth for my friends who died. they deserve an answer. >> reporter: the answer could be in this massive miami warehouse where the remnants of champlain towers, 800 tons of it, is being stored. the facility is off limits to anyone except federal investigators who provided us with this video. they've started combing through the twisted steel and concrete for clues. >> this is pretty long and angular. >> reporter: glenn bell is one of the team's lead investigators. bell spoke to us from the

headquarters national institute of standards and technology, the agency conducting the federal investigation. when do you think we will know why the building collapsed? >> so our timeline for this investigation was to finish our technical findings by the fall of 2023. then we have to work on our report and recommendations. and we're looking for that the fall of 2024. >> reporter: a lot of people in florida can't understand why this is taking as long as it is. >> i want them to know that we're working as fast as we can. and the implications for our findings are huge. we have to get this right. >> reporter: based on what's found, bell's team will recommend any necessary changes to building codes or construction methods nationwide. >> we have over 600 pieces of the structure that we're going to be doing a lot of testing on. and the more that you put together, the more the pieces of the puzzle begin to emerge and stories emerge. >> reporter: what is the story that's emerged at this point?

what do you know? >> right now we're pursuing about two dozen hypotheses, about what the causes may have been. >> small sample collection that -- >> reporter: among the possibilities are shoddy construction, bad design or faulty materials. bell is on the engineering team that investigated the collapse of the world trade center following the 9/11 attack and came out of retirement to try to solve the surfside mystery. >> i've been investigating failures for over 40 years. and this particular investigation i can say is one of the most complex and challenging that has ever been undertaken. >> why is that? >> sometimes in building failures, the immediate causes are relatively apparent. we have no such apparent cause in champlain towers after well more than a year. >> reporter: investigators started scanning pieces of the debris into a massive 3d data base last spring. preliminary lab tests on

building materials began in august. glenn bell told us if investigators discover anything that poses a danger to other buildings, they will reveal it immediately. is it possible after the investigation is complete that you won't know what caused the building to collapse? >> i'm confident that we will, but it will take a long time. >> reporter: back in surfside, allyn kilsheimer told us the investigation doesn't need to take two more years. he was hired by the city of surfside hours after the collapse to conduct its own investigation. >> we have to get to the trigger. i always say a building talks to you if you know how to listen to it all right. and it finds a way to support itself or it finally says i give up, i can't support it. i'll fall down. >> reporter: kilsheimer a renown engineer was part of the investigation after the oklahoma city bombing and the 9/11 attack on the pentagon. so where are you in the

investigation right now? how far along? >> we're about eig months behind where i wanted to be. >> reporter: that's because kilsheimer is still negotiating with federal investigators for permission to do is own tests on the building samples locked up in that warehouse. is this unusual? >> i've never run into it before. >> not with the pentagon, not with the oklahoma city bombing. >> i've never run into it before. it's very unusual. >> reporter: it took until this past august before allyn kilsheimer was allowed to do this, his first big on site test. we watched as his team used 350 tons of steel plates to measure how much load the structural site could handle. >> this building sat there for a very long time, right? it's been there for 40 years. full of people for 40 years. it has cars in it for 40 years. buildings just don't fall down. >> reporter: with neither kilsheimer or federal investigators providing answers, survivors and victim's families

have come up with their own hypotheses. one is that weeks of vibration of construction of the oval-shaped condo next door somehow compromised champlain towers south. this complains the digging was, quote, too close to our property and we have concerns regarding the structure of our building. some of the people who lived in the towers have expressed a lot of concern about vibrations of the building that was next to it being built. is that something that you're looking into? >> these are just one or two of the many failure hypotheses that we're pursuing there. but we definitely are looking at it very carefully. >> reporter: the companies that built that condo were among the participants in a $1.1 billion settlement with survivors and victim's families. the insurers for the project paid $400 million but said the development had no role in the collapse. the deal is no comfort to shannon gallagher.

she lives in a condo that's next door to new construction in surfside. >> this building is how old? >> 1965. >> 1965. how safe do you feel in it? >> i don't. i don't. >> reporter: gallagher is worried about the potential vibrations from work plans just below her and asked a florida court to intervene. >> so you see this little two-story building. this building is going to be replaced with a building that's going to be significantly taller, about 158 feet. you can literally feel vibrations when they were working on that building and it's further lot away. and you could be standing and feel the building vibrate. i can hear people who live in manhattan say, we build right next to each other, what's the problem? >> i understand development. there's going to be some thought for who you're building next to. >> reporter: families of the victims have also accused the condo board of champlain towers south of not immediately repairing structural damage. in this 2018 report, an engineer

hired by the condo board flagged failed waterproofing below the pool deck and cracking in columns in the garage. >> they needed $15 million to make the repair to the garage and the structure. they had 700,000. >> reporter: eric glazer practiced condo law in florida for 30 years. and estimates he's trained 22,000 owners across the state in how to manage their condos. >> in order to get on the board, there's no prior qualifications that you're an accountant or attorney or have any prior business experience whatsoever. >> reporter: so what happens? >> sometimes the budget isn't done right. sometimes the spending isn't done right. often times the repairs are not done right. >> reporter: glazer told us condo boards can face intense pressure from neighbors, especially retirees to keep costs low. that's not easy. two thirds of the condos in florida are at least 30 years old.

in october, this 50-year-old condo in miami beach was deemed unsafe and its residents ordered out when engineers found a crack in a main support beam had expanded. >> doesn't anybody think eventually these buildings are going to need repair? >> reporter: and now the bill has come due. >> now the bill has come due. >> future condominiums never have to worry about another surfside taking place. >> reporter: the scrutiny of condo boards pushed florida to pass sweeping condo laws. 110 ayes, 0 nays. the new requirement includes structural inspections by engineers or architects for condos three stories or higher. any recommended fixes must be made. and condo boards have to set aside enough money for future repairs. >> now you're having situations in florida where people on a fixed income will be asked to come up with thousands of dollars. they don't have it. >> reporter: how will this change who comes to florida, who lives in florida? >> well, the days of grandma and

grandpa who are solely on social security coming to florida and thinking they're moving into a condominium, that's gone forever. >> reporter: glazer expects the developers who have already transformed much of south florida's coast into a canyon of glass and steel will look to buy out older condos that can't afford repair. then, tear them down and replace them with a more profitable luxury condominium. >> less than a year after champlain towers collapsed, we had development firm come and make offers. what we were offered was significantly below market value. >> reporter: robert listman and his family live two doors down from the collapse in a condo built by the same developers as champlain towers south. do you think they thought these people are desperate, they're scared and they're going to take these offers? >> absolutely. they could buy our apartment for what it's worth. they could buy our building for what it's worth and still make a killing off of it. >> reporter: are you worried that another developer is going to come and say, hey, you know, most of you aren't going to be able to afford this.

can i buy your apartment? >> i know that there's going to be a lot of owners that are am u then look at this offer that they're given and go for whatever it is they can get. >> reporter: as part of the settlement with homeowners, raysa rodriguez told us she got less than market value for the condo she lost. $70 million was paid to lawyers who represented survivors and victim's families. as for the property where champlain towers south once stood, it's been sold for $120 million to a developer from the persian gulf with plans to build a luxury condominium. your heart is the beat of life. if you have heart failure, entrust your heart to entresto, a medicine specifically made for heart failure. entresto is the #1 heart failure brand prescribed by cardiologists. it was proven superior at helping people stay alive

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the horrors of the holocaust were met with various forms of resistance. some insurgents fought back by

smuggling food and weapons into jewish ghettos. tonight, we'll tell you about a very different kind of resistance group, nicknamed the paper brigade. made up mostly of writers and intellectuals living in what is now lithuania's capital, the members risk death smuggling artwork, books and rare manuscripts, hiding them in underground bunkers. today, 80 years after the paper brigade fought back against cultural genocide, their heroics are still unfolding. there's an active search and rescue mission where troves of hidden material continue to be uncovered, discovered and recovered. >> my intention is not to seize it and take it and bring it some place. it's to open it up so the public can see it -- >> reporter: put it out there. >> and put it out there in the world for jonathan brent is an

curator namuso, 24 million sh cultural artifacts. this past spring we met him with the institute originated in 1925 and where some of its collection has been unaccounted for since world war ii. we looked on as brent examined documents in a storage closet at lithuania's national library. >> this is very much an active investigation? >> yes. this history is not over. >> reporter: beneath the hill of three crosses, this capital wears its history with grace. but its beauty masks a dark chapter. today the city is mostly catholic. but before the second world war, it was nearly half jewish and a magnet for dramatists, poets from all over eastern europe. they wrote mostly in yiddish, the german hebrew dialect. of eastern european jews. most people in america know nothing of the great flourishing of jewish culture that took place in this city. >> reporter: then in the summer

of 1941, the germans invaded the soviet union and occupied lithuania. many of the local citizens collaborated with the nazis and within six months 50,000 of the 70,000 jews were killed. >> one of the worst slaughters during the holocaust, some 90 to 95% of the jewish population of lithuania was murdered, brutally, ruelly, sadistically. >> reporter: not often in camps, i gather? >> shot, burned hideous. >> reporter: the nazis were also determined to extinguish the jewish culture. and in the capital, there was no place more central to jewish culture than yivo. smithsonian of sorts part museum, part library, part university. it's archive was as varied as it was massive. sigmund freud and albert einstein sat on the original board. mark shigal painted the synagogues opened its art wing.

strikes me someone had an unhappily sense of all this that you're creating this collection and capturing this history right before other people are trying to erase it. >> yes. well, the jews had quite a bit of history that prepared them for that eventually. >> reporter: after the germans invaded, a special squad of nazis comen common deared the headq headquarters. but the nazis needed help for assessing what was valuable. they rounded 40 jewish artists to sort through rooms upon rooms housing the collection. but the paper brigade had other ideas. they set aside the most significant manuscripts and art and organized a smuggling operation back to the ghetto.

homemade diapers concealed the contraband from the nazi guards. they had ten hiding places. the largest was underneath this ho 60 feet down accessible only through a sewage tunnel. you've said that some people resisted by taking up arms or by smuggling food or medical supplies, and this was a form of resistance also? >> yes. because they knew that if they are not going to survive, the jewish people would have their culture again to remember. >> reporter: hadas is the granddaughter of an avant-garde poet in the 1930s. during the war, he became one of the leaders of the paper brigade. >> it was a nickname paper brigade. people in the ghetto laughed at them. oh, you're smuggling papers. smuggle food. we need food. >> reporter: what was the response to that? >> you have to understand that

poetry, literature and culture was part of their soul. >> reporter: she grew up er r ories. we inher tot we rceute, and she told us about the night her grandfather barely escaped the nazi guard at the gate of the jewish ghetto. >> he was knocked down and the papers came out of him. and he took the gun the guard and said, what, you're not allowed to take anything in, anything. >> reporter: he says he told the guard that the papers were needed for kindling. >> and he let him in. >> reporter: among the items he con concealed, the original writings of a gentleman known as the mark twain of eastern europe, whose stories inspired fiddler on the roof. in 1944, the soviets liberated lithuania and reclaimed the country as part of the soviet union. only eight of the 40 members of

the paper brigade had survived the war. >> this is unbelievable picture of them coming back to see what can we save? >> reporter: armed a with a homemade wheel borrow and shovels, they dug up the treasures from their hiding places. >> reporter: your grandfather put himself at huge risk doing this. did he ever discuss with you whether it was worth it or not? >> he felt that if he survived, then he has a mission to be the deliverer for the dead, for the stories, for the culture, so that is the point of living. >> reporter: but with the soviets now controlling lithuania, jewish life again came under assault. everything the paper brigade risked their lives to protect was endangered for a second time. >> these treasures that connected you today with the past of 700 years ago gave you a sense of your own history and value of it and importance of it

and the soviets wanted desperately to destroy that and make you a soviet citizen. >> another form of eraser. >> yes, absolutely. >> reporter: they began a second secret operation. they stuffed their suitcases with books and enlisted couriers redirecting materials to yivo in new york city where the institute relocated during the war. the rest of the material was assumed destroyed. but a brave catholic librarian took up the cause. risking his own life, he hid whatever was left behind in this empty catholic church. but for almost 50 years, remnants of the jewish life vanished and the city's jewish past was not discussed. the university professor grew up catholic and would become lithuania's minister of culture. >> my knowledge about jewish

history and culture and holocaust was very vague when i was a teenager. >> reporter: you weren't taught about the holocaust in school? >> no, no. i had to discover this legacy se >> reporter: he was 17 when he finally chanced upon dated yiddish inscriptions in the old section of town. as his curiosity grew, he studied yiddish and says he became intoxicated by the culture it encompass. >> yiddish literature for me is nexus of poetry and beauty and human destinies. it is full of voices of survivors, of victims and also of heroes. who tried to rescue this culture, this community against the evil of totalitarianism.

>> reporter: they heard whispers about a hidden literary bounty but it wasn't until the breakup of the soviet union in the '90s that jewish culture could emerge from hiding. he was invited inside the 18th century catholic church where the brave librarian had hidden the books. through the years he created a book sanctuary with literary works rescued and concealed from the red army, floor to ceiling under the dusty baroque arches. the church is now empty and awaiting renovation. but we asked to go there and show us where the books are hidden underground, in the confessional and the bellows of the 18th century organ. i'm just trying to picture you walking into this unexplored book palace. >> some of those books have bloodstains. some of them had inscriptions made by the readers who most

probably were killed. >> reporter: today these books are slowly bringing legacy back to life. so says jonathan brent who became yivo's director in 2009. >> the materials that yivo had collected represented a body of materials which, if it were wiped out, would leave an absence that could never be filled in. and it would lead to total cultural deprivation for those jews who might survive. >> reporter: the literary equivalent of easter eggs, the artifacts keep popping up in lithuania. it triggered a custody battle. the lithuanians argued for the trove to stay in lithuania. yivo executives insisted it be reunited in new york with its documents. fearing it would deteriorate, brent brokered a deal. yivo would protect it now. and iron out ownership later.

>> these are fragments of books that were scooped out of the burnt rubble of the yivo building, brought here to new york, preserved in these boxes. >> reporter: yivo's director of archives in new york, stephanie hallberg just completed 7 year, $7 million project overseeing the cataloging and digitizing of the paper brigade's entire collection. do we know if the paper brigade preserved this? >> they did. these are the surviving pages. it's not the full manuscript we have. only about a dozen or so pages. >> reporter: as new works are discovered, voices from a century ago are amplified. consider the works of, now years after his death, is coming to be appreciated as a towering 20th century poet. his 1946 memoir was published in english just last year. >> the learning in many, many universities not just in lithuania also in the united states and canada and in china

and in japan. >> reporter: lithuania is now home to only 4,000 jews but it's on account of the paper brigade and continuing discoveries that the country is starting to reckon with the nazi atrocities and its uncomfortable history. even schools are now starting to teach about how lithuania's jews died and how they lived. do you know the phrase cpr? strikes me you're really bringing it back to life. >> i hope so. but still lack wider recognition in our society. in the course of last 20 years, our society became more open towards different versions of its own past. >> reporter: in the process, lithuanians have started learning about how an unlikely group of resistance fighters, both jewish and catholic, took the ultimate risk to assure arts and letters would survive.

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♪ this city is magical! attention passengers, if you look out your windows, you'll see a magnificent tree and a glorious world of holiday joy. happy holidays from the middle of everything! tonight, we want to introduce you to a musician named sona jobarteh, who introduced us to the beautiful sound and story of a centuries old instrument called the kora. it's a string instrument from west africa, part of a musical

tradition that dates back to a 13th century empire and has been passed down strictly from father to son, man to man, in a special set of families ever since. sona jobarteh was born into one of those families called griot, the daughter of a gambian father and a british mother. after hundreds of years of men, she is the first woman to master the kora. in her performances around the world, and in her work off stage, she says she is keeping tradition alive through the very act of breaking it. ♪ take a listen, as we did, to sona jobarteh as he plays the kora. ♪ with its 21 strings played by

just four fingers, two on each hand, it has a sound both foreign and familiar. ♪ to me it's like a harp. what do you compare it to? >> i don't actually compare it to anything because it's normal for me. i compare other things to the kora. ♪ >> reporter: the song sona played for us called jarabi is a traditional love song. ♪ sung in the mandinka language. ♪ the tradition goes back to the 1200s when a kingdom called the mali empire reigned over a large swath of west africa, the territory of several modern day countries. the musicians and story tellers in the empire were men called griot who counselled kings,

resolved conflicts and passed the legends down orally through the centuries. women in griot families were singers, but it was only men whl st ♪ that is until sona jobarteh. at 39, she has become one of the foremost kora players in the world. ♪ performing with her band across europe, west africa, and here in the united states, as we saw in this packed theater outside boston. ♪ >> when you hear this music, it still to this day carries the feeling of the empire at its greatest. you get that feeling of royalty. you get that feeling of

something that you're so proud about. >> one, two, three. ♪ >> reporter: what i think about with you is that you have broken tradition. >> it's not the way i see mysel belief in the tradition has to evolve. traditions are not stagnant. they grow with humanity and with society and always have. at one time this instrument was not around. then it became invented and became something modern. yet now it's considered traditional. in terms of me being female, this is a very central and important adaptation the tradition must take in order to be able to be relevant to our new society. >> reporter: sona jobarteh comes to the griot tradition as both insider and outsider. her mother is a british artist. her father, the son of a legendary gambian kora player whose griot family pedigree traces back to the 13th century. though her parent's relationship didn't last, sona grew up in

both warlds, the uk and her grandfather's family compound in gambia where she says her grandmother urged her to embrace the griot heritage which has a girl meant singing. >> she kept telling me, you have to sing. i never wanted to sing. i hated singing with a passion. >> reporter: why? you have the perfect voice. >> didn't like it. never liked it. >> reporter: but your grandmother knew you had a great voice. >> i was a stubborn child. >> reporter: but she was drawn to the kora. as a little kid, no one seemed to mind her learning some of the basics. she thinks her grandmother may have even liked the idea. in the uk, though, she studied a different musical tradition, classical cello. and she excelled. winning a scholarship at age 14 to a prestigious music boarding school. were you one of the very few biracial kids in the school?

>> the only person of color in thfirst school>> rorter:he ope >> yes. i was incredibly shy as a student. i never talked. that's my only way of surviving those years i would say. >> reporter: w was it a tough time? >> yes, it was a very tough time, yeah. happiness was not a major part of it. >> reporter: but she did find one point of connection to her life in the gambia. >> the library in the school had a kora there hanging on the wall. so i would be always looking at this thing. and then one day i decided to take it off the wall. it was a total mess you can imagine. so what it started doing is every time i get a little time when the place is quiet, take it off the wall, fix a string, put it back. i was doing it hoping no one would notice. i kept taking it off the wall. there was one lady a late night worker said why don't you take it to your room and keep it there and work on it. >> reporter: she's your hero. >> it became my sanity. >> reporter: and her calling at 17 she decided she needed to

study the kora properly which meant taking a personal risk, appealing to her father to pass the tradition down to her, his daughter, as his father had to him. they hadn't spent much time together as he had been living and performing mostly abroad. for years and years and years, kora playing was passed father to son. >> uh-huh. >> reporter: father to son. >> exactly. >> reporter: and along comes your daughter. >> yes. >> reporter: sona. did she say, dad, will you teach me? >> yeah. she said what i really want to learn is the kora. >> reporter: but girls didn't play the kora at that point. >> what i told her i said, if i close my eyes i don't have to know the difference, a man or -- >> reporter: oh. >> if you can do that for me. >> reporter: you immediately said okay. >> i immediately said okay. >> reporter: you never hesitated. i never hesitated, no. >> i don't want you to get distracted with this whole idea of being female. don't let it get in your head.

don't let it distract you. your ambition needs to be a good kora player, not a female kora player, just a good kora player. that was my challenge at the beginning. >> reporter: how hard did she work? >> she worked very, very hard. >> reporter: she started performing, sometimes with her father, and then with her own band. she got acceptance first in europe. ♪ and then back in the gambia with a song and video she released in 2015 to celebrate 50 years of gambian independence. it's become the country's unofficial national anthem with more than 24 million views on youtube. minus the dancers, we found the gambia much as sona's video depicted it. a tiny country on africa's west coast, it's a former british

colony that's predominantly muslim, precolonial culture runs deep here. sona jobarteh's name and heritage carry weight. and she's leaning into that ancient griot role of cultural leader to advocate for what she calls her purpose in life outside music, creating a new model of african education. she has founded a small school called the gambia academy, where students study dance, drumming, kora, of course, and another traditional griot instrument called the balafon. >> the music gets the most attention because everyone sees it and enjoys and it likes. but they're learning all the same subjects as any other school, math, science, geography, history, all these

things. however, how is that imparted to you? >> so this means what? >> reporter: sona believes most education in africa has been so deeply rooted in colonial models that its message to children is that their own legacy is somehow back ward. >> so they fail to do things improper. so they'll do it this way. this way is very much a european way. my challenge is now can you get the same output, successful output, if we actually create, change the cultural orientation at the heart and center of the education system. >> from your elbow to your finger should be a straight line, huh? >> reporter: so the students here wear traditional african uniforms. >> the hand, okay. seven, eight. ♪ >> reporter: and gambian culture is celebrated. rohi and bori have been coming to the school since it opened seven years ago. here there are no restrictions by gender or pedigree. rohi is learning to play the kora and bor ivgs i is in the

advanced balafon class. >> i like it. it makes me feelery happy when i'm playing. >> reporter: are you griot? >> no. >> reporter: are you griot? >> no. >> reporter: and you're female. look at you both laughing because you know what i'm talking about. >> yeah. >> yeah. >> reporter: won't that be awfully difficult. >> you know what a man can do, a woman also can do it. so i'm not from a griot family, but i love to play kora. when you love something, you can do it. >> reporter: are you getting pushback from within the society? >> yes, of course. especially from the older generation, but it doesn't matter. ♪ >> reporter: sona's first album was a mix of traditional and new songs. her latest, which we saw her rehearsing with her band, is all original music. she writes all the parts herself, including songs about

education, women and her own identity. and she sings them in mandinka. ♪ >> for me, when i sing in my own language, the language that belongs to the gambia, there is -- i'm giving you a sense of pride that you never have before. that your language is as valuable. ♪ when i can go to an international audience and i can have the whole audience in germany, spain, america, all over the world, and they're singing mandinka -- ♪ >> reporter: the power she says of music. >> it becomes a universal language. i can talk with anybody from anywhere in the world using music. i can't do that in any other form. ♪ >> reporter: and she's doing one

more thing. ♪ passing the tradition down to h talented balafon player. and next link from the griot past to its future. you had said to her, when i close my eyes, i don't want to hear a female -- >> no. > reporter: kora player, i want to hear a great -- >> kora player, yeah. >> reporter: close your eyes and tell us what you hear. >> i hear a great, great, great kora player. ♪ >> i'm very, very proud, definitely. >> thank you so much. the complexities of playing the kora --

>> reporter: how challenging is it to play that instrument? >> very. >> reporter: a 60minutesovertime.com sponsored by pfizer. ♪ peaceful state. full plate. wait, are you my blind date? dancing crew. trip for two. nail the final interview. buy or lease? masterpiece. inside joke. artichoke. game with doug. brand new mug. come here, kid. gimme a hug. the more you want to do, the more we want to do. boosters designed for covid-19 variants are now available. brought to you by pfizer & biontech.

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healthcare. get medicare with more. in hollywood, there's a saying, nobody knows nothing in this business. studios can invite audiences for sneak previews or test the box office appeal of the stars. but they can't predict a hit.t m elections have shown it's not only in the movie business that nobody knows nothing. in spite of many pollsters who dissected every aspect of the campaigns and candidates, in spite of focus groups probing the public psyche, the outcome when the ballots were tallied was a surprise to both parties. voters were less angry and more moderate than the political soothe sayers predicted. turnout was high. voters weren't turned off. and while we wait for some important races to be decided, we also wait to see how this new group of legislatures will work

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