Members of the MaSC team (Safeya Alblooshi, Maryam AlShehhi, Carlos Guedes) together with filmmaker Amna Alnowais cinematographer Waleed Al Madani were in Ras Al Khaimah doing field work with members of the Shihuh Tribe on January 15 and 16.  This work consisted in recording the Shihuh traditional styles such as the  nadbah, the razeef al Shihuh, and the rawah, as well as traditional work songs and lullabies sang by women. This is part of project “Exploring the Musical Traditions of the Shihuh” (PI Carlos Guedes) partially funded by a faculty research grant from the Sheikh Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research (35,000 AED) and will focus essentially on doing field recordings of the music of the Shihuh. The recordings took place at the Shihuh Cultural and Heritage Society, and at the Lehmoudi house in Ras Al Khaimah.

It is expected that this data collection will subsequently be used by the MaSC research team for the computational analysis of the music, and to perform similarity comparisons to other regional styles. The project has three interrelated components: (1) the audiovisual recording and focus group interviews about the music styles to be recorded; (2) a short ethnographic video documentary; and (3) the publication of a scholarly paper in a relevant peer-reviewed journal reporting the entire project and its results.