{"id":46019,"date":"2018-04-24T15:00:58","date_gmt":"2018-04-24T21:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=46019"},"modified":"2018-04-24T15:28:47","modified_gmt":"2018-04-24T21:28:47","slug":"como-mamas-are-bringing-the-gospel-to-double-decker-arts-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/como-mamas-are-bringing-the-gospel-to-double-decker-arts-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Como Mamas are Bringing the Gospel to Double Decker Arts Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Saturday April 28<br \/>\n11:30 am<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Born in <strong>Como<\/strong>, <strong>Mississippi<\/strong>, sisters <strong>Della<\/strong> and <strong>Angela<\/strong> and cousin <strong>Ester Mae<\/strong> express their passion through\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">what\u2019s most familiar to them. Music has filled their lives for more than 50 years, through the church and the\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">uplifting sound of their grandfather\u2019s guitar that pulled them through times of turmoil. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cBack then you had to go to\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">church, it wasn\u2019t a choice you made,\u201d says Ester Mae. \u201cWe would go and sing in the choir but they didn\u2019t have a\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">pianist. That\u2019s why it comes easy for me to sing without background music. I grew up without it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/thecomomamas\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Como Mamas<\/strong><\/a> share the Gospel through powerful and compelling vocals, driving both passion and grace\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">into the words they sing. Such emotional and spiritual intensity conveyed through unaccompanied voices is a rare\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">phenomenon, and therefore has garnered much interest over the past years, especially from <strong>New York<\/strong> field recorder\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>Michael Reilly<\/strong> and <strong>Daptone Records<\/strong>. After hearing the Mamas sing during his first visit to Como in 2005, the only\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">word Reilly could muster up in response was \u201cwow.\u201d Since then the Como Mamas have released two albums with\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Daptone Records: <em>Como Now: The Voices of Panola County, Mississippi<\/em>\u00a0in 2008 and <em>Get an understanding<\/em>\u00a0in\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">2013.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">With two albums under their belt, the Como Mamas continue to progress their sound. Most recently,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Daptone brought the Mamas to New York to try something new and record with the <strong>Menahan Street Band<\/strong>. Such an\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">opportunity was truly exciting for these small town a cappella musicians accustomed to only the echo of their own\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">voices among the church walls.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aGwRxQoeQEM\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Though it wasn\u2019t necessarily what they had planned for the session, Reilly remembered hearing them sing\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cWell, Well\u201d and \u201cOut Of The Wilderness\u201d when he was in Mississippi, and asked them to give it a try with the\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">band. \u201cWe learned these songs growing up in church, but the beat really adds something to our music that I think\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">everyone will love, especially the younger folks,\u201d said Della.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">This opportunity to deliver the message of their music to a larger audience has the Como Mamas beyond\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">excited. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cIt\u2019s different, but I think this kinda music will open the ears of the young folk,\u201d claims Ester Mae. \u201cWe\u2019re\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">trying to capture everybody. We all need to know about Jesus and what He does for us every day.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">The Como Mamas continue to further their career with Daptone Records who in 2014 partnered with the\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Music Maker Relief Foundation out of mutual interest to keep this musical tradition of gospel alive.<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/TheLocalVoiceLigature-25web.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"25\" height=\"16\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14544 alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/TheLocalVoiceLigature-25web.jpg?resize=25%2C16\" alt=\"The Local Voice Ligature\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday April 28 11:30 am Born in Como, Mississippi, sisters Della and Angela and cousin Ester Mae express<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":46020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[321],"tags":[11664,6422,8,948,642,1380,4,3,753,6424],"class_list":["post-46019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-localfestivals","tag-como-mamas","tag-double-decker-arts-festival","tag-food","tag-gospel","tag-ms","tag-music","tag-oxford","tag-the-local-voice","tag-tlv","tag-visit-oxford"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/2018-04-24-Como-mamas.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}