The Music and Sound Cultures group were recently awarded a grant for the planning of a research center at NYUAD. This grant ($28,600) will support exploratory activities towards the creation of a center dedicated to the preservation and computational understanding of music and sound cultures from a region constituted by what is often called the Arab mashriq (comprising the present-day countries Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan and western Iraq), the countries of the Arabian Gulf and Peninsula (including eastern Iraq), South India, and the western Indian Ocean (including port cities and regions of eastern Africa).