Anderson H. pointed me to Como Now, a new a cappella gospel album by Daptone Records, recorded in (North) Panola County, Mississippi. My first year teaching was at North Panola High School in the town of Sardis, about ten minutes of cotton fields south of Como; my students came from all of the county north of the Tallahatchie River, which means Sardis, Como, and Crenshaw. A few of the “Jones Sisters” (Chapter VIII) came and sang for us Mississippi Teacher Corps people in Oxford over the summer.
The text of the promotional site (and the narration of the videos) has some clumsy generalizations and a touch of exoticism (“Folks in Como believe that…,” “In Como, everybody sings and everybody prays,” etc.) but the singing is wonderful, and with the photographs that are displayed in the videos evokes the place where I lived and worked for a very difficult year better than anything else I could suggest. I will be buying the album.