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Timothy Rice Appointed Chair of UCLA's Department of Ethnomusicology

Carolyn Campbell (ccampbel@arts.ucla.edu) (310) 825-6540
For Immediate Use Thursday, October 17, 1996.

Timothy Rice, a highly regarded ethnomusicologist, has been named chair of the Department of Ethnomusicology in the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. The appointment, effective Sept. 30, was announced by Dean Daniel Neuman.

"We are fortunate that Professor Timothy Rice, a very distinguished scholar, has accepted the chair. Professor Rice has provided excellent oversight of the department as vice chair during the past year and brings to Ethnomusicology many years of academic experience within the university system," Neuman said.

Rice, who holds a B.A. in history from Yale and a Ph.D. in music from the University of Washington, joined the ethnomusicology program at UCLA in 1987 after teaching at the University of Toronto. He was promoted to full professor in 1993. His research focuses on the traditional music of southeastern Europe; he has published numerous articles and a book on the folk music of Bulgaria and Macedonia. Much of his recent work and his book "May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music" (University of Chicago Press, 1994) address questions of how culturally significant issues are encoded in musical sound and acted out in musical performance. He is particularly interested in how aesthetic values and practices influence, and are affected by, the political and economic life of a society.

Rice also has contributed, in articles and the book "Cross-cultural Perspectives on Music" (University of Toronto Press, 1982), to theoretical debates about the nature of ethnomusicology and its relationship to other fields, especially music education. He edited Ethnomusicology, the major journal in his field, from 1981 to 1984 and served for four years as treasurer on the board of directors of the Society for Ethnomusicology. He is one of two founding editors of the ambitious "Encyclopedia of World Music" (Garland Publishing, New York), and he has enlisted scholars and editors from around the world to put the knowledge gained by ethnomusicologists in the last 40 years into the first-ever compendium, organized geographically. The first four volumes should appear in 1998, and Rice, along with two co-editors, is now editing the volume on Europe in the 10-volume set.

The Department of Ethnomusicology, the first established in the country, explores the rich variety of musical expressions found throughout the world and offers B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in ethnomusicology, as well as a graduate specialization in systematic musicology.

Department of Ethnomusicology faculty: Tara Browner, Kenny Burrell, Jacqueline Cogdell Dje Dje, Nazir Jairazbhoy (emeritus), Roger A. Kendall, Cheryl Keyes, Steve Loza, James W. Porter, Jihad Racy and Roger Savage.

Visiting faculty: Francisco Aguabella, Nati Cano, Amy Catlin, Ustad Shujaat Khan, Kobla Ladzekpo, Danny Lee, Benjamin Suchoff, Ankica Petrovic, Edward Wapp, I Nyoman Wenten, Gerald Wilson and Ikuko Yuge.

-UCLA- CCCE442

Contact: Carolyn Campbell
Phone: (310) 825-6540
Email: ccampbel@arts.ucla.edu