Greetings!

The 2005-06 academic year will be memorable for many reasons. For us in the department, this time is meaningful because a pioneer and imminent figure in the field of ethnomusicology has passed. As many of you already know, Mantle Hood, the founder of the program in ethnomusicology at UCLA, died on Sunday, July 31, 2005, at his home in Maryland. He was 87 years old. A memorial in his honor will take place at SEM in Atlanta in November, and many of his former students plan to make presentations. The department will be represented.

While some may regard Hood's passing as a sad occasion, I view it as an opportunity to celebrate his life, legacy and achievements. Without Hood, ethnomusicology as we know it today would not exist. His interest and desire in crossing boundaries through performance and scholarship encouraged many of us to be opened to new ways of learning and thinking about music.

Hood arrived at UCLA in 1954 as an Assistant Professor, and established the Institute of Ethnomusicology in 1960. The fourteen years (1960-1974) he served as the Director of the Institute will probably be remembered by some as the golden years. When the Institute was disestablished, no one fathomed that individuals committed to what ethnomusicology represents would develop a dynamic program that would match and attain even greater heights than what Hood could have imagined.

The Department of Ethnomusicology began as an idea by a few committed faculty members in the Department of Music. In January 1989, the UCLA Academic Senate officially approved departmental status, but Nazir Jairazbhoy (the first chair) and the staff began operations as an independent unit in fall 1988.  Through the efforts of Jairazbhoy, other ethnomusicology department heads (Charlotte Heth, James Porter, Daniel Neuman, and Tim Rice), faculty, and staff, UCLA's ethnomusicology program has become the largest and one of the most prestigious in the world.

With such a strong and impressive foundation, one might ask: Where do we go from here? How do we build on excellence? Today, I believe ethnomusicology at UCLA is in a period of "new beginnings." Not only  are we improving on what has been established, but we are on the threshold of accomplishing more. As a member of the UCLA ethnomusicology family, you are a part of this legacy and we hope that you will continue this tradition.

To start our "new beginnings," we have begun several new initiatives:

Website
We want you, our alumni,  to remain connected to the department and feel you are part of the UCLA ethnomusicology community. The website is one way for us to do this. We are creating a "Where Are They Now?"   http://www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/alumni/wherearetheynow.htm page, to list the institutional affiliation of B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. graduates. We have also created an "Alumni Record Update" page  http://www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/alumni/alumniupdate.htm to help keep our records updated. We will also use this information to to develop the "Where Are They Now?" page.

Even if you think that we have contact/institutional affiliation information for you, please fill out this interactive form, which also gives us permission to put your name and institutional affiliation on our website.

We also invite you to review other parts of the website that have been created. For example, the "News and Events" section is now divided into several parts: department news, faculty news, students news, and alumni news.

Alumni News
We hope that you will share news about yourself with our international community via this section     http://www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/newsevents/news/alumninews.htm  Please send a sentence about any new publication, position advancement, new job position, a major performance, award, research, etc to Donna Armstrong   donnaa@arts.ucla.edu 

Students News
We are also excited about the student news section of the website because this will allow us an opportunity to celebrate and share with others the many achievements of our students. In this section, we will present brief announcements that students send us about their awards, presentations, concerts, commendations, etc. To begin, we have included photos and brief information about our incoming graduate and undergraduate students 
http://www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/newsevents/news/studentnews.htm.

Department News
Within the "department news" section, we have uploaded photos from the two retirement parties that took place in Spring 2005. Photos from Mary Crawford's party can be found at
http://www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/newsevents/news/crawford.htm

and photos from Tim Rice's party appear at
http://www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/newsevents/news/rice.htm.

Student Services
A new student services section has been added to the website. It includes all of the information that was previously available in the department's student handbook. Therefore, it contains helpful information regarding degree requirements, policy and procedures, forms, and resources for the graduate and undergraduate programs in ethnomusicology. It can be accessed from the ethnomusicology website by clicking on "Students" and then "Student Services" or you can access the site directly by clicking  http://www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/students . I want to thank Anna Laven, the Student Services Officer in the department, for developing the student services section of the website. If you have suggestions about the student services section of the website, please contact Anna directly at <alaven@arts.ucla.edu>.

I want to thank Donna Armstrong, the Chair's Assistant, for developing the news sections and other parts of the website. Please contact Donna if you have comments or suggestions.

Activities for 2005-06
The department has planned several activities for the 2005-06 academic year. In fall 2005, we will host a concert of North Indian classical music on Sunday, October 2
http://www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/newsevents/news/sambhi.htm. On Thursday, October 13, French ethnomusicologist Simha Arom will present a lecture. We have informally dubbed this year as our "Year of African-American Music." Therefore, between October 24 and November 6, 2005, there will be concerts, a symposium, lectures, and films that celebrate the contributions of African Americans. In Winter 2006, New Orleans blues pianist Henry Butler will be our Regents' Lecturer. For two weeks, February 20 to March 3, 2006, he will be in residence giving lectures, performing, and conducting workshops (See http://www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/newsevents/upevents.htm  )

As the new chair of ethnomusicology, I am eager to learn about issues of importance to you because you are an important part of the legacy of ethnomusicology at UCLA. So please do not hesitate to contact me if you have comments or suggestions. Also, please join us if you are living in Los Angeles or visiting when activities of interest to you are taking place.