Society for Ethnomusicology, Southern California Chapter
Thirty-fifth Annual Meeting, 24-25 February 2001
University of California, Santa Barbara

President's Report


To the members of SEMSCC and conference participants of SEMSCC 2001 at UCSB:

We are meeting here in beautiful Santa Barbara thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the local arrangements committee whose members are: Dolores Hsu, Scott Marcus, Nina Fales, Tim Cooley, Julia Banzi, and Tom Grunland. On behalf of chapter members, I'd also like to thank the Chair of UCSB Department of Music, Lee Rothfarb, whose generous support significantly supplemented our meeting budget and whose personal assistance made possible the roommate locator link on the conference web site. In case you haven't had a chance to look at the conference web pages, they are remarkable with maps and written directions to the conference site, links to the program, and the roommate locator link--which is to my knowledge--a first for the local chapter meeting. I understand that this well-crafted site was put together by UCSB graduate student, Julia Banzi. Thank you, Julia. And final thanks go to the UCSB "Instructional Resources" whose director Art Battson has provided the video equipment for the meeting free of charge.

The meeting program was organized by the members of the program committee Katherine Hagedorn, Todd Cashetta, Christi-Anne Castro, and Helen Rees, who acted as committee chair. Thanks to their timely efforts, conference participants were given e-mail notification of paper acceptance about three weeks prior to the conference. This year, 32 abstracts were received. Of those, 4 were rejected and 28 were accepted.

I would also like to acknowledge the efforts of former chapter President, Rene Lysloff, who continues to oversee the chapter website and e-mail list serve.

With elections held at last year's meeting, all of the chapter officer positions were filled with new officers. While the transition has been fairly smooth, we have hit one rather significant obstacle. The chapter bylaws have failed to be transmitted from generation to generation of chapter officers. So far I have contacted 3 past presidents (Rene Lysloff, Amy Stillman, Jacqueline Djedje), two past secretary/treasurers (Louise Spear and Scott Marcus), the SEM business office in Bloomington, and the coordinator for all of the SEM regional chapters (Janet Sturman). No one seems to have a copy of our chapter bylaws. With this meeting I am placing an official call for everyone to search their file cabinets, desks, and closets. If we are unable to find the document, I'm afraid that we will have to form a committee to begin the process of drafting new bylaws. I would like to open this matter up for discussion later in the meeting.

Respectfully submitted,
Nancy Guy