section_path: Society and culture/Folklore and culture
section_name: Folklore and culture
paragraph_text: Folklore and culture
  
  There are many stories about coffee and its impact on people and society. The Oromo people would customarily plant a coffee tree on the graves of powerful sorcerers. They believed that the first coffee bush sprang up from the tears that the god of heaven shed over the corpse of a dead sorcerer. Johann Sebastian Bach was inspired to compose the humorous Coffee Cantata, about dependence on the beverage, which was controversial in the early 18th century.
  
  In the United States, coffee is sometimes called a "cup of Joe". The origins of this phrase is in dispute; a common story is that in World War I the US Secretary of the Navy Josephus "Joe" Daniels banned alcohol on navy ships which meant that the strongest drink available aboard the ship was black coffee. Sailors began referring to coffee as a "cup of Joe" in reference to Daniels. However, this story may be apocryphal since the first written account of it was in 1930, some 15 years later. Another explanation is that a formerly popular nickname for coffee, "jamoke" from mocha java, was shortened to "Joe". A third origin story is that since coffee is such a commonly consumed beverage, it's the drink of the average Joe.