Category Archives: News

MaSC at the Maritime Heritage Festival

March 20, 2022Field Work, Newscag204@nyu.edu

MaSC started a partnership with the Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT) at the first Abu Dhabi Maritime Heritage Festival (MHF) that took place at Abu Dhabi’s Corniche between March 18 and 27. This partnership entails supporting the DCT in recording and recovering the traditional songs from the maritime traditions of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. In the festival, members from the research team (Safeya Alblooshi, Juan Sierra, Carlos Guedes) and cinematographer Waleed Al Madani recorded performances of the Nahma and Ahalla as well as interviews with musicians and organizers.

Group of musicians getting ready to perform the Nahma

Exploring the musical traditions of the Shihuh

January 17, 2022Field Work, NewsShihuh, Traditional music, UAEcag204@nyu.edu

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.

women and drums — Women performing wedding music

Welcome Safeya Alblooshi!!

November 21, 2021Newscag204@nyu.edu

Safeya Alblooshi will started an appointment as Research Assistant at the Music and Sound Cultures (MaSC) Research Group on November 21 for a period of three years

Safeya Alblooshi is an Emirati Russian practicing sound artist based in the Emirates. She holds a BA in Music and a Minor in Interactive Media from the New York University Abu Dhabi. Her work includes sound for interactive performance, live scoring, soundwalks, and audio-visual installation pieces, through which she engages with topics of conceptual narrative, environmental listening, and interactivity in performance.

In her three-year appointment, Safeya will work at different levels in the group as web developer, music annotator and data manager, maintain and update the Music and Sound Cultures (MaSC) website, develop specialized websites to conduct experiments and to host specialized content (e.g. demos of MaSC software and musical applications that run on web browsers). She will also do annotations of features of the music in specialized software (like Sonic Visualizer) and create specialized metadata tags specifying musical features to assist on the computational analysis, work on digitization and digital transfer of music from the region according to the NYUAD Library standards for digital preservation.

Safeya earned this position through a competitive search via the Kawader program.

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.

Getting NYUAD on the Groove: Five Years of Rhythm-Related Research and Activities

September 25, 2019NewsSafeya Alblooshi

Robert Rowe, Carlos Guedes, Akshay Anantapadmanabhan, Andrew Eisenberg, and Kaustuv Ganguli presented at NYUAD Institute an overview of research on musical rhythm conducted at MaSC in the past five years. You can see the video of this joint talk here.

New grants for research projects totaling over $270,000

September 2, 2019Honors & Grants, NewsSafeya Alblooshi

MaSC has received two grants for research projects from NYUAD’s research enhancement fund (REF).
Project “Computationally-engaged approaches to rhythm and musical heritage: Establishing cross-cultural relationships using data-driven approaches.” (PI: Carlos Guedes. Co-Investigators: Andrew Eisenberg, Beth Russell, Yi Fang, Brian McFee, Robert Rowe) has obtained $249,634.00. Pathway project “The Swahili Musical Imagination: Intercultural Style and Aesthetics in the Compositions of Ally Salim Basalama.” (PI: Andrew Eisenberg. Co-Investigators: Clarissa Viercke (U of Bayreuth), Carlos Guedes, Robe Rowe) has obtained $21,883.60.
Both projects will be running until August 31, 2021.

Getting Abu Dhabi on the Groove: Five Years of Rhythm-Related Research and Activities.

April 29, 2019NewsSafeya Alblooshi

Robert Rowe, Carlos Guedes, Akshay Anantapadmanabhan, Mark Cartwright and Kaustuv Ganguli presented at NYUAD Institute in New York (19, Washington Square) an overview of research on musical rhythm conducted at MaSC in the past five years.