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Friday, Mar. 29, 2024

A tribute to ‘Grandma’ Annie Moses

With just under two weeks to go before our opening concert at the Niswonger Performing Arts Center, I am getting more and more excited about the Annie Moses Band.  The more I read and discover about them, the more I look forward to hearing them.

When one reads “A Tribute to Grandma Moses,” one might think of old-time music.  The Annie Moses Band is far from your grandma’s music, although it certainly pays tribute to Grandma Annie.

Former Van Wert County Commissioner Harold Merkle shared an article with me recently about the Annie Moses Band. It was published in Guideposts magazine in September 2013.  It talks about how the band actually got its name. Great-grandma Moses grew up working hard labor in the cotton fields of Texas.  While toiling in the fields, she would sing songs to help take her mind off the hard work. Many of the songs she learned came from the influence of the Chocktaw Indians and a little country church in the hills of Oklahoma.

Annie Moses Band
Annie Moses Band

She gave birth to two boys and one little girl who acquired her love for music.  She became who the band now calls “Grandma Moses,” the mother of Robin Moses, who is the founder and mother of the Annie Moses Band. Although Grandma Moses had only eight piano lessons in her life, she made sure that her children learned piano and had proper training.  She made sure daddy bought a piano, paying $12 a month for a little spinet, complete with a doily on top with wax build up from the candles and mice and termites living in the bottom.

Grandma Moses, however, did everything in her power to make sure her little girl acquired her love of music, for as she put it, “Music helps us give voice to our prayers.  Through music we can express our deepest longings.”  This little girl, Robin, would sing and play in her liddle biddy church every chance she could get.  Her father, a circuit preacher and missionary would take the family with him and they would play and sing while he preached.  It is there that Robin learned to love the stage and gain confidence of performing before crowds.  She eventually would go off to college and study voice and it is there that she met and fell in love with her husband, a piano major.  These were the humble beginnings to the Annie Moses Band.

While at Oklahoma City University, Robin heard a young Asian 5-year-old girl playing “Go Tell Aunt Rodie” on a little miniature violin. She was so taken by it that she made a pact with her husband that her children would learn to play the violin, or fiddle as they called it back home!  The pact became reality so much that her kids actually became Julliard-trained violinists. That is quite an accomplishment for someone with such a menial background as Robin’s.

After all the training and broad musical accomplishments, this family started their own family band.  When it became time to think of a name for the band, mother Robin said, “Let’s call it the Annie Moses Band in honor of my mama and her mama who had a dream that music would get them out of the cotton fields of Texas and on the stage of Carnegie Hall and the Grand Ole’ Opry and on October 4, the Central Insurance Stage at the Niswonger Performing Arts Center in Van Wert, Ohio!

I hope you don’t miss this opportunity to see the fruits of Grandma and great-grandma Moses when the Annie Moses Band lights up the stage with a night of inspiration and music. We would love to have a full house to show them our gratitude for coming to Van Wert.  Call the box office (419.238.6722) or go online (NPACVW.ORG) and reserve your seat now!

FINÉ.

POSTED: 09/24/14 at 5:34 am. FILED UNDER: News