All posts by Safeya Alblooshi

Dialogues At Al Hosn – Music of Crafts panel talk

March 24, 2023Events, NewsSafeya Alblooshi

This Tuesday, members of the MaSC team spoke at the inaugural session of Dialogues At Al Hosn, a panel discussion with the curators and content developers of the Music of Crafts exhibition.

Thank you to Qasr Al Hosn for the fruitful collaboration and to NYUAD Community Outreach for opening the dialogue with us.

MaSC at the 2nd edition of the Maritime Heritage Festival

February 28, 2023Field Work, News, UncategorizedSafeya Alblooshi

MaSC continues to collaborate as partners with the Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT) for the second edition of the Abu Dhabi Maritime Heritage Festival. Last week the core team recorded traditional performing arts from the UAE’s maritime culture such as the Lewah, the Lewah performance, and the Ahalla performance.

The Music of Crafts exhibition at Qasr Al Hosn

January 20, 2023Events, NewsSafeya Alblooshi

The Music of Crafts Exhibition came from a collaboration between Qasr Al Hosn, the House of Artisans, New York University Abu Dhabi, and the Music and Sound Cultures (MaSC) Research Group.

Music of Crafts exhibit – multichannel installation

The “Music of Crafts” exhibition is an audiovisual journey of the artisanal crafts of the United Arab Emirates – the talli, the sadu, and the khoos. Qasr Al Hosn’s collaboration with MaSC portrays the crafts from an audiovisual macroscopic lens, in which details are captured to draw the observers’ attention to the specificities of the gestures and the sounds related to each craft. Subtle video and audio processing enhance the setting providing a sophisticated immersive experience.

The videos and recordings created for this exhibition will be available to the public to download for free, allowing us to share Emirati handicraft culture, and the musical way it is interpreted.

The exhibit will be running on site in Qasr Al Hosn until March 2023 and the videos can be viewed in MaSC’s YouTube channel, along with binaural renderings of the talli and sadu crafts sound compositions made for the multichannel installation available on Soundcloud.

Release of four short documentaries about the musical traditions of the Shihuh

December 6, 2022NewsShihuhSafeya Alblooshi

The Music and Sound Cultures (MaSC) Group has released four short documentaries about the musical traditions of the Shihuh.

The four videos document the Nadbah, the Rawāḥ, the Razīf al-Shihuh, and the M’hobi. They provide a rare insight into these genres through an account by their own performers, who also discuss the social functions and values associated with their performance. The documentaries were directed by Emirati filmmaker Amna Alnowais with Syrian cinematographer Waleed Al Madani, and are part of research project “Exploring the musical traditions of the Shihuh” (Principal Investigator: Carlos Guedes) funded by the Sheik Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research and NYU Abu Dhabi. This project is part of MaSC’s continued effort in exploring, documenting, and preserving the music and sound cultures of the UAE.

The videos can be viewed in MaSC’s YouTube channel at the following link: https://tinyurl.com/mwvz58fp

Music of Crafts recording at the Qasr Al Hosn

December 1, 2022Field Work, News, UncategorizedSafeya Alblooshi

The MaSC team spent two days recording sounds of traditional crafts which include the Sadu, Talli, and Khoos weaving at the House of Artisans in Qasr Al Hosn, along with student volunteers Maitha Alriyami and Diana Donatella. The recordings will later be featured in an auditory installation experience at the Qasr Al Hosn next year.

Preparing the recording session at Qasr Al Hosn

Further recording at the Shihuh Cultural and Heritage Society in RAK

October 24, 2022Field Work, NewsSafeya Alblooshi

Members of the MaSC team joined by collaborator and cinematographer Waleed Al Madani along with visiting scholar and filmmaker Amna Alnowais were in Ras Al Khaimah doing further recordings of the musical traditions of the Shihuh tribe as part of the project “Exploring the Musical Traditions of the Shihuh” (PI Carlos Guedes).

Recording the nadbah — Performance of the nadbah

Filming the Ruwah performer — Filming a ruwah performer

Performance of the razeef — Recording the razeef

Welcoming Amna Alnowais and Ghazi Al-Mulaifi as visiting Scholars

May 20, 2020NewsSafeya Alblooshi

Amna Alnowais and Ghazi Al-Mulaifi are currently two visiting scholars at MaSC.

Amna Alnowais is an award-winning Emirati filmmaker with interests in the cultural and musical traditions of the Arabian Peninsula. Dr. Ghazi Al-Mulaifi is a Kuwaiti applied-ethnomusicologist that engages with traditional and modern Kuwait pearl diving music.[2020-05-20]

Oscar Gomez admitted to the Ph.D. in Computer Science at Duke University

May 15, 2020NewsSafeya Alblooshi

Student researcher Oscar Gomez, who just finished a B.A. in Computer Science and Mathematics at NYUAD (Class of 2020), was admitted to the Ph.D. in Computer Science at the prestigious Duke University. Oscar has worked at MaSC in computational audio analysis, machine learning and visualization techniques, having developed the dashboard application for visualizing MaSC’s Digital Music Compendium of music from the Arab world and neighboring regions.

MaSC welcomes new student researchers

February 20, 2020NewsSafeya Alblooshi

MaSC welcomes new student researchers to work on our ongoing projects: Welcome Nour Abdelmoneim, Maxim Blinov, Gautham Lali, and Nhi Pham Le Yen.

Enriching the Content of Knowledge in Tolerance and Human Fraternity. An event promoted by the Ministry of Tolerance

November 4, 2019NewsSafeya Alblooshi

Carlos Guedes participated in panel Enriching the Content of Knowledge in Tolerance and Human Fraternity. Expo Center, Sharjah, UAE, on November 4, 2019. This event was organized by the Ministry of Tolerance under the patronage of HE Sheikh Nahayan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan. Guedes was part of the panel discussion about artistic content, discussing the importance of music, and the research currently undertaken by the Music and Sound Cultures (MaSC) research group as a means to promote tolerance and cross-cultural understanding.