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TheMudcat Café is anonline discussion group and song and tunedatabase, which also includes many other features relating tofolk music.
The website was originally founded in October 1996 as aBlues-oriented discussion site.[1] It was named after aMississippi Delta region catfish, capable of living inmuddy waters, known locally as amudcat. This region was the birthplace of the AmericanDelta Blues style.Mudcat Café later transitioned from a blues music forum to a folk music forum. The website incorporated theDigital Tradition song database after the database lost its original home.[2] Max D. Spiegel, the website's founder, is still its administrator as of 2023.
Membership is free and the site is run by volunteers.
The discussion group (the Forum) is divided into music-related and non-music-related topics:
Mudcat hosts both a web-based and a downloadable version of theDigital Tradition song database (also known asDigiTrad orDT). It was started in 1988 by pooling the song collections of Dennis Cook and Susan Friedman in electronic form, usingaskSam format.The song database is updated on a regular basis by members ("Mudcatters") and now[when?] contains the words to over 9,000folk songs, many with an accompanyingMIDI file[3] and links to further information.
The downloadable version was last updated in 2002 and is available in MS-DOS askSam format. Versions were previously available for Mac[4] and Windows.
The Links section of the site provides links to "Festivals and Venues", "Instruments", "Lyrics, Sheet Music & Tabs", "Performers and Composers", among other subjects dealing with folk music and blues.
The Mudcat Songbook on the site presentsMP3 recordings of songs written and recorded by Mudcatters.
Mudcatters in different countries meet up regularly at "mudgatherings".[5]
Mudcat began a regular online event known as the Mudcat Worldwide Singaround in June 2020.[6]