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"When you're in your twenties you think you shouldn't say certain things, but the older I get the more I think, 'who cares what people think?'"
Honest Talk With Derek Lee Ragin

By Robert Wilder Blue

Derek Lee Ragin was one of the first American countertenors to enjoy international success. His career has coincided with the resurgence of interest in baroque opera, a coincidence that has made Ragin well known and, perhaps even more important, regularly employed in the early music world. He comes from Newark, New Jersey and while there is never really a "normal" path for a modern countertenor to follow, one could guess it's a long way from Newark to the Met. How did his journey begin?

"I was born at West Point while my father was stationed there. When I was four years old we lived in Bermuda and I remember being able to sing. That was probably the beginning of my musical awareness. I came from a very musical family: both my mother and father sang - my mother still sings (she's only 62 years old). I don't even know if she was aware of what she was doing, but she would sing all the time - opera, jazz, blues. I found out later that after we had moved to Newark she was going into New York to be in off-Broadway shows - she never told us at the time. I think she was concerned about us - there were five children - and she didn't want us to know, for some reason. I was in the Newark Boys Chorus and I went to the Newark Community Center for the Arts after school. It's still here although the prices have skyrocketed. I also learned to play the piano - I have a degree in piano and music education from Oberlin Conservatory.

While I was at Oberlin I was singing in the choir and the director, Ursula Stechow, encouraged me to pursue a solo career. Her late husband, Wolfgang, was the co-founder of the Göttingen Händel Festival. I was singing tenor at the time but because it was an early music ensemble, I would flip into my head voice - you really had to do that to sing a lot of that repertory - and she recognized that I might have the ability and range to be a countertenor. I didn't know what she was talking about, but she told me there were lots of countertenors who were making a living in Europe. She suggested I go to Europe and sing for John Eliot Gardiner, and I ended up working with him quite a bit.

"I literally went from being a piano and music education major to pursuing a singing career overnight. After I sang for Gardiner I returned to the U.S. and sang for Max van Egmont at the Baroque Performance Institute, who invited me to study with him in Amsterdam. When I say study, it was more of a coaching. I really never had any formal vocal training. I kind of sang on instinct and once I started working I didn't really have time to polish my technique. I had been working for nineteen years and things were going well until last year when I had a bit of a vocal setback.

"I went to a doctor who found a lot of swelling on the vocal chords. She told me I wasn't breathing properly and was using my neck muscles too much. When I told her I wasn't studying she told me I had better start! I went to another doctor who told me the same thing. I didn't really know what they meant. Both of them told me they could tell by the way the air was flowing that there was a lot of pressure on the vocal chords. So I started studying voice for the first time in my life."

We wondered if the vocal technique and production was the same for a countertenor as for the other ranges? "It should be the same, although a lot of countertenors are not taught that. We should be breathing and singing the same as mezzo-sopranos and baritones. Some teachers won't teach countertenors because they think it is a different production. But it's all the same - that's what I've learned from the two teachers I have studied with."

When Derek made his Met debut in 1988 in Händel's Julius Caesar, he and fellow débutant Jeffrey Gall became the first two countertenors to appear on that stage. At that time, countertenors were still a novelty on American opera stages. Their first challenge was convincing the audience to take them (and their voices) seriously. Race was not the foremost issue in Derek's mind. "Being a countertenor and being in the early music world, there really haven't been that many issues because I was black. I think that when they are hiring a countertenor, they don't really care what color we are. I mean, if you're not hired and rehired at the Met, people will say they are being racist. I used to agree with that when I heard other singers' stories, but how many countertenors is the Met going to hire in one season? These days, they're going to hire David Daniels because he is possibly the only one who will sell tickets. When I go to a baroque opera, I want to hear someone like David singing because he approaches his roles just as other singers do. It's real singing and it's very dramatic. Some of the countertenors I've heard don't fit the part dramatically, but David is one countertenor who fulfills the dramatic requirements of the roles.

"I think it's wonderful this new generation of countertenors is getting promoted like sopranos and tenors. Although having said that, I think there can be something unhealthy about the way they promote these young singers - whether they are countertenors or sopranos. The way singers jet around and take steroids to be able to perform when they are not feeling well is horrible.

"The music industry - the opera world - is different now. It's a matter of selling tickets. A new generation is coming along and they are always looking for new stars - younger people. When we're not getting hired, some of us get bitter about it. I really don't think it's because of discrimination. Some people say I'm being naïve, but I don't think so. When you look at the Met's roster ten years ago, there were a lot more African-Americans than today. So you wonder what happened to them. But for my part, I don't think that is discrimination. Ninety-nine percent of the time it's going to be a white person performing opera. We're are a minority in the classical music world - it's as simple as that.

"A friend and I were talking a few weeks ago and I was telling him that I wasn't getting hired as much as before and I realized that I was getting into a situation where I wasn't being healthy. I realized I needed to wake up. I don't think it has anything to do with the fact that I am black. Although, I think there are some things most of us will not say publicly. Thomas Young's name comes up all the time when this subject is raised. People say he should have been at the Met twenty years ago. But I don't believe it was only because he was black that he hasn't sung there. If you speak to him, I'm sure you'll hear a lot. But he's older and probably feels he has nothing to lose by speaking openly. I think you get to a point in life where you just say, 'this is how I feel and it may not be the complete truth, but it's what I have to say.'

"When your career is going well you don't really question the things that are happening, of course. Then when your career slows down, you begin to ask questions. 'What's going on? Why aren't I working as much?' Thank God our agents don't tell us why we're not hired. If they did, we'd be wrecks! There are only a handful of people who have star careers. One needs a major recording company with the conductors and contacts behind one's career. I came along a bit before the countertenor boom - David Daniels, Brian Asawa and Andreas Scholl all had exclusive recording contracts. But now the industry is cutting back, so we'll see what happens. In the beginning of the early music movement there was a lot of support. If they liked what you did, you were invited back. I don't think there's that kind loyalty now in the early music world. I am actually doing some more contemporary music now.

"Last year I had to cancel quite a lot of engagements, but this year I'm back to work and seeing how it will go. I would like to be hired to sing more opera and that isn't happening now. When I was recording and performing I enjoyed opera more than anything. I have some work coming up, but after that I have been wondering about whether I might want to retire from the international circuit, stop travelling all around and just find a job and pay the mortgage."

What issues are involved in generating an audience for classical music/opera from the African-American community? "Classical music is not taught in schools now, so the 'regular' people are not getting exposed to it. When I was growing up in Newark - and we're talking 25 years ago - we had a choir and an orchestra and we learned a little music theory and music history. As for African-Americans there were only ever a handful who were interested in classical music, and you'd see that throughout the process -- through college and the conservatories. So there aren't that many of us to begin with, and then you wonder what happens to them after school. I went back to Oberlin last summer and there was only one other African-American person there - an oboist. It makes you wonder where the others are. I don't know if classical music is reaching the average African-American person now.

"What the Three Mo Tenors have done is great. Now you may not like that, but I think it's exposing a lot of people to the world of opera. I have gone to two of their performances and, yes, there were a lot of black people in the audience, but there were also people of every heritage there. If this is the sort of thing we need to do to reach the public, then I don't see anything wrong with it. It goes back to music education, and there really isn't any music education happening now - and that is all over the world. How do you expect people to know about classical music, to go to performances and buy records? Kids still have to become aware of classical music in the public schools."

"I am at an age now where I'd like to share what I've done with younger countertenors. Because of this 'Age of the Internet,' I get e-mails from lots of African-Americans, blacks, people of color, whatever - people from Africa, Brazil, the U.S., from all over… so perhaps my presence has made a difference. I think I've shown some of these younger countertenors that a black countertenor can make a mark."