Ethnomusicology chair receives first Laura Boulton Professorship

Ruth Stone, chair of the IU-Bloomington Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and director of the Ethnomusicology Institute, has been named the first Laura Boulton Professor by Kumble Subbaswamy, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.\n"I'm very pleased to have this honor," said Stone, who was notified of the professorship in a letter from Subbaswamy. "This professorship honors her and her very energetic, independent and adventurous spirit."\nThe professorship honors Boulton, a scholar who recorded and preserved music from around the world. \nAccording to a press release from the College of Arts and Sciences, Boulton traveled to Africa almost 20 times for her recordings. Many of her recordings are kept at the Archives of Traditional Music and the Mathers Museum of World Cultures.\nStone said her work is slightly different from Boulton's because Stone is an analyst as well as a recorder.\n"I do more scholarly investigation," Stone said.\nStone's work focuses primarily on two specific regions, Liberia, West Africa, Stone's childhood home, and the Middle East.\nStone said she had always been familiar with Boulton's work but never met the scholar, who died in 1980.\n"I once saw her at a conference when I was a student," she said, "but I never met her face-to-face."\nThe professorship, which is funded by an endowment from the Laura Boulton Foundation, allows Stone to have an assistant to help her with her research.