I received my Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and specialize in the music of the Near East and Africa. I have taught ethnomusicology courses at the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, Riverside, and Pomona College. I am also a professional cellist, performing both Western classical and Arab music. My book, Music in Druze Life: Ritual, Values, and Performance Practice (Druze Heritage Foundation, 2007), focuses on the music of the Druzes, an Arabic-speaking people of the Near East, who are members of an Islamic sect that began in Cairo in the eleventh century as an offshoot of Isma‘ili Shi‘ism. Currently, I am the Publications Director and Events Coordinator at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Department of Ethnomusicology and am Director of the Ondine Chamber Ensemble. Click this link to see my curriculum vitae: Hood CV