About me...

This Web page serves as a summation of the trajectory my life has taken, from a Moroccan youth to relocation in the U.S. In 2002, I parlayed my early education in qanun at the Conservatoire National de Danse et de Musique de Rabat into the formation of the Arabesque Music Ensemble, a professional touring ensemble which has performed throughout North America at venues ranging from Georgetown University to the Festival du Monde Arabe de Montréal. Allied endeavors have included releasing three award-winning CDs of music by Egyptian composers and founding the Heartland Seminar on Arab Music, an intensive program designed on the traditional mentorship model.

Gravitating toward Academe, I enrolled in Ethnomusicology studies at Columbia University in the City of New York in 2015, and have cultivated my research interest in Moroccan musics and their intersection with the forces of colonialism and post-colonialism. As a doctoral fellow, I am responsible for teaching courses in Asian Humanities, and frequently present papers at conferences of SEM (Society for Ethnomusicology), ICTM (International Council for Traditional Music), and MESA (Middle East Studies Association). I was honored by the invitation to write several articles on Arab, Maghrebi, and Andalusian musics for the recently published SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture. My dissertation research focuses on coloniality in Morocco and its impacts on pedagogy and, more broadly, the viability of indigenous musical genres within the Kingdom.

Enrichment beyond Academe includes climbing and running, pursuits which merge athletic challenges with pristine natural settings, with the Western states particularly favored.