Azizi, you said:

...maybe these individuals who are specifically interested in the subject of African music, will stick around and and join in other discussions, and-hopefully, join Mudcat and regularly posts on whichever thread they wish to, and start new threads too.

I'm in full agreement with you about that. I have come to the conclusion that personal help is one of the most effective ways to build community, so that is the context I come from. (My upthread post about that was a contribution to the effort, not an argument or complaint about the best way or the only way.)

The link I posted earlier, BTW, gives access to hear sound clips of that group-- it's not just a plug for an appearance, although the thread TITLE is. It is a normal Mudcat convention to use a thread name as the link text. Some folks want to hear music, some want to talk about it, some want to do both. And some folks who have no context about African music at all need to hear it before they can talk about it.

Musicians especially, I think, want to talk about the musicality of music to a greater extent than they want to explore the cultural ramifications... And I think we do have more musicians here than professional historians, sociologists, or musicologists. Although some musicians do think about and talk about (and argue about) music's cultural ramifications-- and Mudcat is a great place to do that-- there are a lot of us who just want to experience music, by hearing it and making it.

I hope there is room for that, too, in your ideas, because folks around here seem to like trying out what other Mudcatters recommend, and this thread may also create an entry point for that side of things-- as Peace's BBC link does, above.

Hey-- did you know that you have already added something special to the culture of Mudcat with the term you often use, "upthread"? It's especially a good piece of lingo when you consider that a thread displayed 50 posts at a time doesn't show a previous post physically "above," but below-- and so "upthread," like "upriver," is a great word in this kind of setting.

You ARE appreciated here!

~Susan