I’d like to formally welcome Beau Bothwell of Kalamazoo College as the inaugural “chair-elect” of SAMR. As discussed in our meeting in Albuquerque, Beau’s position will change to “chair” upon the election of a new chair-elect, most likely following our next meeting at SEM in Bloomington, IN. Beau shared some thoughts when expressing his willingness to serve that are worth including here:

Now that my two toddlers are mostly sleeping through the night, I have some energetic surplus to expend, and would love to use it to help increase the useful interactions between scholars of Arab music, within SAMR and beyond. Given that many of us are relatively isolated on our home campuses. I am particularly interested in how SAMR might facilitate greater cooperation between scholars, whether that means larger projects like the proposed journal, or more targeted types of coordination (reading groups, regional meet-ups, joint multi-campus artist invitations, etc…)

Alan Karass has also agreed to remain involved as we continue to explore the potential for collaboration with the ICTM study group on a journal project. He will be attending that meeting in Cairo and will represent our organization, though I invite any others who are in both groups and who are heading to Cairo to reach out as well.

Beau and I will begin work on a short survey of the membership in the near future. I ask you to keep an eye out for that as it will help us to make some important preparations regarding where the SIG should be going and what we, as a group, can and should be doing.

Thanks, as always.

Chris