Edited by Azizi Powell
This post presents a reprint of an essay that I first published on January 22, 2024 in the pancocojams post entitled "An Overview Of Mudcat's Folk Music Discussion Forum (With Added Observations by Former Mudcat Member Azizi Powell)". https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2024/01/an-overview-of-mudcats-folk-music.html
In addition to that essay, this post presents a reprint of the first comment that I published on Mudcat folk music forum as a guest.
The content of this post is presented for historical and socio-cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to Mudcat for the lessons and the information I learned there and the positive relationships I formed there.
-snip-
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2025/12/why-i-was-motivated-to-launch-this.html for the related post "Why I Was Motivated To Launch This Pancocojams Blog & Astrological Placements For The First Pancocojams Post (August 29, 2011)"
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PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S NOTE
I'm revising this essay about how I became a member of Mudcat folk music forum as part of my effort to document, to work through, to better incorporate what I need to and to let go of the rest of that experience.
I'm publishing these comments on this blog in large part because doing so will help me find them and also because these comments may be of interest to other people.
I also plan to publish a pancocojams post about the major astrological planetary placements for the date of the first post that I published on this pancocojams blog. Although I don't intend to publish a post on the major astrological planetary placements for those Mudcat dates, I've just realized that the dates that I began commenting on Mudcat folk music forum as a guest and then as a member are very close to the date of my first pancocojams post.
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HOW I BECAME A MEMBER OF MUDCAT FOLK MUSIC FORUM
by Azizi Powell, January 22, 2024
That said, if people read certain Mudcat discussion threads, it's clear that sometimes I was the target of trolling from certain Mudcat members. I emphasize the fact that I voluntarily left Mudcat in this pancocojams post because I want those people and others to know that I wasn't kicked out of that forum.
Also, I would be lying if I didn't admit that I was tired of being the only Black person on Mudcat. I admit that I didn't have to respond to requests to explain things like what did sports commentator Don Imus' mean when he called Black women university basketball players "nappy headed hoes"? But I've learned since then that I didn't have to bear that burden and I'm much happier for letting it go.
As regular visitors to pancocojams are aware, I re-publish a lot of material from Mudcat on pancocojams. I publish this material on pancocojams for folkloric reasons in part because lately-actually for quite some time-Mudcat has been sporadic in its availability and I want to help ensure that its rich treasure trove of material is shared as much as possible.
I always publish material from Mudcat and from other sources with citations and thanks to those commenters who I quote.
I readily acknowledge and sincerely thank certain Mudcat members in particular for role modeling for me and others how to transcribe folk songs from recordings. I also acknowledge and thank certain Mudcat members for teaching me and others through their role model the importance of gathering and documenting not just the text (words) of folk songs (and, and particularly for me, children's recreational rhymes, cheers, and singing games), but also as much information that you can about who, where, when, and how those examples are sung and performed.
As per the Mudcat information page that I can still access
by clicking my name in the heading of a discussion thread comment, from
September 4, 2004 to November 11, 2014 I posted (wrote and published) a total
of 10,171 comments on Mudcat. Many of these posts were on discussion threads
that I started about children's rhymes and cheers. My last Mudcat post provided
information about and a link to my new blog cocojams2.com.Cocojams2 is a blog
that focuses on children's rhymes,cheers, and singing games. Many of those
examples were previously found on my multipage cocojams.com website. I
voluntarily closed that website because I was having problems with the server
company I used. Also, in contrast to the Google blog formats, for cocojams.com
I had to rely on the generous assistance of my technical savy friend Lucas
Musewe to post anything on cocojams.com and it was difficult for that format to
post videos. In contrast, the Google blog format made it (and still makes it)
easy for me to post new material, including YouTube videos.
Perhaps ironically, my first post as a member of Mudcat was on a thread about the origin of the song "Kumbaya".https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=65010
For background purposes, here are three complete comments and two partial comments from that particular Mudcat discussion thread (with numbers added for referencing purposes only)
1. Subject: RE: Kumbaya
From: GUEST,Azizi
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 05:17 PM
As a non-Gullah African American, I stand by the position that this spiritual is from the Gullah traditions and means "Come by here".
We {African Americans} need to be better at protecting our heritage from well meaning misstatements and conscious theft.
That being said, I do like reading posts here and am learning more about folk music in the United States and across the Atlantic.
However, it doesn't appear to be very many African Americans or other people of color posting here.
Sometimes race and ethnicity does matter."
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2. Subject: RE: Kumbaya
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 09:22 AM
"Azizi: Glad to see you posting here. It is true that there are very few (if any) blacks who post on Mudcat. That says less about the interest of white folks in here in black music (because the interest is very high) than it does about the lack of interest of black folks in America in black folk music and blues. I'm kinda checkerboard on this. I have a black gospel quartet and sing in a black Men's Gospel Chorus in church but am white and of Danish descent. My wife is black, and so is half of my family, now.
A few weeks ago, I had a very exciting weekend when my wife's grandaughter and her fiance stayed with us. He is a young black minister from the south who is spiritually on fire, and has a great desire to learn more about music. When he told me that he loves blues, I started mentioning names like Mississippi John Hurt (because the young man is from Mississippi), Reverend Gary Davis and Leadbelly and he had heard of none of them. He had never heard of Robert Johnson, even though just about every white kid in America and England in the 60's and 70's was familiar with his name, if not his music, through performers like Eric Clapton. Now, I'm introducing him to his "roots." In the meantime, I'm trying to find more Scandinavian music to become more familiar with my family hostory's roots.
Songs like Kumbaya (when not played as background music over the speakers in the mall) are finding their way back into the black churches. There is a wonderful new hymnal, African American Heritage Hymnal published by GIA pulbications out of Chicago which has become a regularly used hymnal in the black church my wife and I attend. When the choirs and congregation sing Kumbaya, it takes on a different life.
Anyway, Azizi, why not become a member of Mudcat. We could use your thoughts and perspectives. I'm the only white male member of a church of over 1,500 black members and I feel right at home there. I think you'd find yourself right at home in here.
My gospel quartet will be singing at the NOMAD festival in New Haven in November, and I know we will once again be warmly greeted there.
The three other members of my quartet are black... two grew up in the south, and formed their musical tastes singing in black churches, listening to blues and jump tunes in juke joints, listening to stories from family members who were freed slaves, and listening every week to the Grand Ole Opry. They love bluegrass and old-time music, just as I love black gospel. The third member is from Kingston, Jamaica and has his own reggae band.
Music can transcend all artificial boundaries that man creates.
Jerry"
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3. Subject: RE: Kumbaya
From: Jeri
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 10:47 AM
"Azizi, I also hope you hang around and post from your perspective.
4. Subject: RE: Kumbaya
From: Azizi
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 05:26 PM
"Thanks for the invite Jerry and Jerri. As you see I have joined the club!
I'm not obsessed with the origins of Kumbaya but I will add that it is composed using common African American characteristics such as repetition, and short 4 line open ended verses such as someone's weeping/praying/singing/shouting etc etc etc.) Also see yourDictionary.com which states that Kumbayah started in the 1920s as a Gullah spiritual song. However, that website also states that the Uncle Remus tales was written in Gullah language, and I'm not sure that's true.
Regarding the need for more African Americans to embrace blues, jazz and other folk music..true true.
While my primary interest is in children's game song, rhymes, and cheers and United States secular slave songs, I am very interested in helping to raise awareness about other Black music genres.
I also love to learn about other musical genres in the USA and elsewhere.
I learned about this website two years ago from someone named Frank, I believe, who visited my website www.cocojams.com because I had included an example of Jim Along Josie. I wasn't ready to join Mudcat then but I have told others about your site and will continue to do so."
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5. Subject: RE: Kumbaya
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 09:07 PM
Hi, Azizi. Long ago I was Frank.
I would like to get correct information on Kumbaya aka Come
by Here, Lord. I have posted the information 'as I know it' but that, of
course, is not the last word. Some of the singers of Seeger's time, I think,
have put their own spin on the song."...
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Prior to the above comment exchanges, I posted the following comment on Mudcat:
. https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=52464&messages=60&page=1
Subject: RE: Jim Along Josie: lyrics and origin
From GUEST, Azizi
Date: 25 Jul 04 - 12:35 AM
"I'm writing this to correct information I made some two years ago on my website cocojams.com that I see have found there way here and Lord knows where else. Let me first apologize and offer the following information as a way of making up for any confusion I caused.
Firstly, I wrote that Jim Along Josey is included in Thomas Talley's 1922 Negro Folk Rhymes. I was mistaken. The versions I was speaking of are found in Dorothy Scarborough's 1925 book on the Trail Of Negro Folk Songs. That Folklore Associates' edition of Scarborough's book, published in 1963 has three different versions of Jim Along Josie {pps 104-106), one called Jim Along, Josey, one called Hold My Mule, and one that Scarborough notes is "a variant of the Josey song
I also said that a josey was a woman's undergarment. I was wrong. As someone wrote in this thread or another, "Josey" is a woman's coat. See John Russell Bartlett, The Dictionary of Americanisms: New York Crescent Books, originally published 1849. "Joseph, a very old riding coat for women, scarcely now to be seen or heard of-Forby's Vocabulary. A garment made of Scotch plaid, for an outside coat or habit, was wornin New England about the year 1830, called a Joseph by some a Josey.
Olivia was drawn as an Amazon, sitting upon a bank of
flowers, dressed in a green Joseph.-Godsmith, Vicar of Wakefield .
I still believe that is "Josey" was {sometimes}used as dance name. See the lines "Hold my mule while I dance Josey
Hold my mule while I dance Josey
Hold my mule while I dance Josey
Oh, Miss Susan Brown."
The other two verses given are: "Wouldn't give a nickel if I couldn't dance Josey". and "Had a glass of buttermilk and I danced Josey".
However it may be possible that an earlier name for the "Josey" dance was "Jim Along, Josey." In that case "Jim Along" probably was the equivalent of the phrase "Get a-long", which Scarborough uses in the chorus of this song "Hey, get a-long, get a-long, Josey"..
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