This is the gumbo session – a mix of current events, topics I’m passionate about and random ideas I’ve been working on. In this episode I talk about former Mayor Lee P. Brown, the Chapultepex Club of the Houston Y.W.C.A., Howard Law and the history behind Juneteenth.
What Juneteenth around the corner I treated this episode of the Gumbo session as a 2nd Black history month. Here in Texas, Juneteenth is a big deal and every June feels like another Black history month.
Subscribe, like, share and leave a comment if something resonated with you. Stay tuned because the next Guest on Bootleg Like Jazz include Austin based artist Midnight Navy and more.
Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton is a mother, wife, educator, and the current, and first Black, Poet Laureate of Houston, Texas. This seven-time National Poetry Slam Competitor, and Head Coach of the Houston VIP Poetry Slam Team, has been ranked the #2 Best Female Performance Poet in the World. Her work has appeared in Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books) Houston Noir (Akashic Books), and I AM STRENGTH (Blind Faith Books) to name a few. Her work has also been highlighted on such platforms as BBC, Houston Public Media, ABC, PBS, Blavity, Tedx, and Upworthy. Her next collection, Newsworthy, is set for release Spring of 2019 by Bloomsday Literary.
Her collaborations with The Houston Ballet, The Houston Rockets, and the Houston Grand Opera have opened new doors for performance poetry. Her work has been highlighted and studied in . She had the pleasure of performing and leading a workshop at the Leipzig in Autumn literary festival in 2018, where she bridged the gap between the slam and formal publishing communities.
As the Executive Director of VIP Arts Houston, she seeks to build more bridges that amplify the voices of artists in and around the nation. Her love for community transcends the classroom and the stage making her a mentor to many and a notable force to be felt.
Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton is a mother, wife, educator, and the current, and first Black, Poet Laureate of Houston, Texas. This seven-time National Poetry Slam Competitor, and Head Coach of the Houston VIP Poetry Slam Team, has been ranked the #2 Best Female Performance Poet in the World.
Her work has appeared in Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books) Houston Noir (Akashic Books), and I AM STRENGTH (Blind Faith Books) to name a few. Her work has also been highlighted on such platforms as BBC, Houston Public Media, ABC, PBS, Blavity, Tedx, and Upworthy. Her next collection, Newsworthy, is set for release Spring of 2019 by Bloomsday Literary.
Her collaborations with The Houston Ballet, The Houston Rockets, and the Houston Grand Opera have opened new doors for performance poetry. Her work has been highlighted and studied in . She had the pleasure of performing and leading a workshop at the Leipzig in Autumn literary festival in 2018, where she bridged the gap between the slam and formal publishing communities.
As the Executive Director of VIP Arts Houston, she seeks to build more bridges that amplify the voices of artists in and around the nation. Her love for community transcends the classroom and the stage making her a mentor to many and a notable force to be felt.
In Episode 03 of Bootleg Like Jazz Erika Thompson stops by to talk about the important work being done at The African American Library at The Gregory School.
Erika Thompson covers Freedmen’s Town, Houston Tx, Pan-Africanism and a cornucopia of other topics. Find out more at http://www.thegregoryschool.org
Bootleg Like Jazz is the Black American, Minority and Immigrant experience. It’s a mixture of Afro-Latino and the Black Diaspora, fake news and the underground, subjugation and determination. Bootleg Like Jazz is a multicultural space for conversations about diversity in travel and art, languages and culture, society and perspective. Bootleg Like Jazz comes from a combination of Black History and Jazz history. Our experience as a Black American or a African-American, began in this country as a diminished experience. We were 3/5ths of a human. Subjugated, denied education, denied having family and only given the scraps. Here comes jazz, in order to learn how to play music Black folks had to learn by ear, from watching other people perform and from knowledge passed down. That’s Bootleg Like Jazz. It’s the idea that they gave us scraps but we turned it into Jazz. Jazz as an art form is built off of diminished chords and diminished opportunities. Art is personal. The musicians, you know, couldn’t legally learn to read or write due to slave codes. This intensifies over time. Most jazz chords are diminished in some form so I thought to myself, jazz is really a bootleg art form. Whether it be finger placement that’s funky or how someone decides to play it that way. It all comes from Black American Musicians jamming and figuring out what sounds the best. The original Founders of Jazz probably didn’t have any formal musical education or separate but equal musical education and many jazz musicians in general started out with a feeling. When Jazz was gaining popularity it occurred during some of the most difficult days in the black community. They were able to create something that people from foreign countries, diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and different tongues would come to love about a people who were once subjugated. That’s the African-American experience – the Multicultural experience. It’s a mixture of being neglected yet finding a way to survive – thrive.
Bootleg Like Jazz 