The Linernotes

The Mudcat Sampler CD Series rose up from convergence. The rivers of change that came together to make it happen, like the rivers of music that are found in the CDs themselves, start from all points of the compass, and meander wildly. For one, there is the eventful, unusual history that led to the founding of the Mudcat itself.

The Mudcat Café may well be the best-beloved music forum in the world. It reflects voices, thoughts, stories, music and song from all over this remarkable planet, going back hundreds of years to the earliest Gaelic, Welsh, French and English songs and forward to the current week's folk-revival performances. Above all else, the people of the Mudcat sing and play and admire the songs of the human heart.

That so wide a spectrum of people should be brought together in a self-sustaining community anchored by music and song is in itself remarkable; that they should survive at the high energy rate of the Mudcat Forum for five years is a feat which reflects on the brilliance of its founders and their loyal technical and administrative backers, as well as the peacemaking abilities of its hundreds of members.

Then there is the unusual series of coincidences that made the creation of these CDs technically possible - the whizbang stuff of the Internet, of databases and email. A critically important aspect of this is the story of the Digital Tradition database, which for many has served as the port of entry to all things Mudcat.

Finally, there is the deep quiet desire in the hearts of so many who showed up daily or weekly in the 'Cat's brilliant and tumultuous discussion threads - the desire to hear the music about which so many voices were speaking from so many different lands and perspectives.

We gradually come to believe that we know one another well, reading between the lines of hundreds of posts; but to hear another person sing from their heart is to know them deeply, immediately, and irreversibly. That knowledge, and the intention to celebrate what it shows about human nature, is the driving force behind these CDs.

This collection, gathered from artists from Wales to Vancouver and Maine to New Zealand, is very much about bringing those myriad voices of music out from their far places, and bringing them into your own hands and heart from all over Mudcat land. It is tendered as an act of love, and of adamant celebration of
those who sing on, generation upon generation, for the good of their kind.

The people who have sent this music to you are not trained singers, and are often only haphazardly trained musicians. Many of them have no profession in music, though some do. Some of them have played their instruments for months, and others for decades. But one and all they relish the singing and making of music, and find it touches them deeply to do it.

The common denominator of all these songs and tunes - polished in a studio or hastily taped between tasks in a kitchen or garage- is the feeling that they carry. It comes through in every one of these pieces - the deeply human passion for song. So for the most part these are ordinary people, singing songs they chose for their own myriad reasons. Combined, I think, they yield a profound and beautiful choral work about who we are, where we have come from, and what it feels like to be human.

It's hard to think of anything more worth celebrating.

Amos Jessup
November 2002