Houston poet laureate emeritus Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton sifted through countless oral histories — spoken accounts from Third Ward residents — as well as in-person interviews with longtime residents to come up with 12 songs that would tell the story of that part of Houston.
The first part of the result was premiered two years ago, but now her collaboration with composer Joel Thompson — A Voice Within — will be unveiled Tuesday and most appropriately at Emancipation Park on Juneteenth. Houston Grand Opera, in partnership with the Emancipation Park Conservancy and the African American History Research Center at the Gregory School, is presenting the new song cycle.
“It was originally myself interviewing Jackie Bostic a community leader and turning her words into a poem and at the same time submitting what the song text version would be,” Mouton says. .
The performance will feature soprano, HGO favorite, and Houstonian Nicole Heaston; baritone Justin Austin, who last year was named Rising Star of the Year at the International Opera Awards and received the Marian Anderson Vocal Award; and pianist Donald Lee III. Moderating a pre-performance panel discussion will be Emmy Award-winning Houston broadcast journalist Linda Lorelle.
“For me it’s about singability,” Mouton explains. “In poetry you can us a lot of alliteration and words kind of become paint that you can use to try to create all of these different layers. But the beautiful thing about song text is the music is also going to be a color. So I think it’s about making space for open vowels that can allow the music to move through them. Maybe shorter lines or shorter stanzas, using repetition very intentionally to have multiple meanings. All of those things play into setting song text. “
This was Mouton’s first collaboration with Thompson, Houston Grand Opera’s Composer-in-Residence. It worked well, she says because “He’s smart, super attentive and detail oriented. It makes things really, really easy when you respect the person you work with.”
The two singers will embody 14 different people with a song cycle that will last about one hour, Mouton says.
As for the stories she told: “They’re all taken as either interviews I’ve done myself or from oral histories provided by the Gregory Research Center. I sifted through those interviews and found voices that I thought could add to the conversation Joel and I were curating.”
Sometimes she wasn’t able to include stories because the interviews were too long and she felt she didn’t have enough time to relay their accounts or because the audio would be so low she wasn’t sure she could capture their information accurately. ” I would sift around those to make sure that I’m getting the most accuracy I can get as a writer,” she explains.
Mouton is often referred to as a “multi-hyphenate” for her work not only as a poet, performer and writer but as a critic and director.
“I don’t know that I seek out to go in so many different directions. I listen to the work and I listen to what it wants to be. And then I allow myself to move through it and give it what it needs. And that for me is a multi-hyphenate approach; it’s a multi-genre approach. Sometimes when I hear something I’m like this has to sing, it has be an aria and for others things you know what, this has to be a short film. And I cna see it in my head to write a script or direct that work to get it done. I think the beautiful part of being an artist is being able to adapt and to change and to take on new challenger and to master and move on.”
With references to Third Ward’s Eldorado Ballroom, local streets and schools, and NASA, A Voice Within is a love letter to Houston, Mouton says, relating lives and experiences that should not be overlooked.
“There’s a lot of reasons it’s important. One, thinking about the history of Juneteenth specifically here in Texas and finding ways to show that the lineage of folks who found themselves out of enslavement and started to build, still exists. It’s a marking of time to show how far we’ve come from that.
“Particularly with politics moving in the direction they have with the intention around removing inclusivity and diversity I think it’s really important that we’re showing the human stories do not have a limitation of skin color or social barriers but that people of all class and creed can tell really meaningful and important stories that can resonate across the human experience.”
“My work in general, I lean toward thinking about human beings and human goals and how we can all kind of see how we can move and shape to be better for each other. “
The world premiere is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 17 at Emancipation Park Conservancy Cultural Center, 3018 Emancipation Avenue. For more information, call 713-228-6737 or visit hgo.org. $25.
