Well, the program will be basically the same "phpBB" thingie that Thinkingbaptists.com uses, and that includes a search function, as well as PM for registered members much like Mudcat (but with much more limited capacity). On the other hand, we won't have the gigabytes to duplicate the contents of archive sites like cyberhymnal.org and oremus.org, so we won't try. I'm hoping that the site will be a place where people can and will discuss a wide variety of topics related to hymns, not just lyric search questions. We'll see how it develops. I'll definitely have links to the major archival sites, and to other resources like The Hymn Lyrics Detective forum at namethathymn.com.

By the way...Is the "G" in "COGIC" pronounced "g" as in "cog" or "j" as in "logic"?

Islamic worship music will certainly be an interesting thing to discuss (be it among African Americans or Muslims in general). My impression is that (congregational or choral, or solo) hymnody per se has little role in ordinary daily or Friday prayers in the mosque, although the muezzin's call to prayer may be related; on the other hand in their special gatherings the Sufis (whirling dervishes and what have you) make use of music, generally in connection with dance, in ways that comes closer to what I think of as hymnic.

Haruo