Dr. Beau Bothwell is Assistant Professor of Music at Kalamazoo College, where he teaches courses in ethnomusicology, music theory, and music history. He completed his PhD in musicology at Columbia University in 2013, and has previously taught at Columbia, the Juilliard School, the American University in Beirut, and the New School.

Beau’s research addresses the music, media, and politics of contemporary Syria, Lebanon, and the broader middle east. His articles and reviews can be found in the journals Asian Music, Twentieth Century Music, Current Musicology, American Music Review, and Yearbook for Traditional Music, as well as edited volumes Music, Tyranny, and Resistance, and Soundtrack to Conflict: The Role of Music in Radio Broadcasting in Wartime and Conflict Situations. His 2018 article “Song, State, and Shabāb in Syria’s Pre- War Radioscape” was awarded the Richard Waterman Prize for “best article in the ethnomusicological study of popular music” by the Popular Music Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology.

He recently co-translated (with Lama Zein), Ali Kisserwan’s two volume Meeting of the Great Pyramids Meeting of the Great Pyramids – The Compositions of Mohammad  ʿAbdel Wahab for Umm Kulthum: An Analytical Study with Complete Musical Transcriptions, Tables, and Appendices (al Maaref Forum, Beirut, 2018.)

Beau is founding co-director of the Kalamazoo College Middle Eastern Orchestra (the Bayati Ensemble), and plays oud and contrabass professionally in the Bahar Ensemble.

Beau is currently President of the Michigan Festival of Sacred Music, which presents the Connecting Chords Music Festival every year in Kalamazoo, and co-chair of the Society for Arabic Music Research.