The United States-Indonesia Society is a private, nonprofit organization incorporated in Washington DC whose mission is to increase understanding and awareness of Indonesia in the United States and to promote a better appreciation of the U.S.-Indonesia relationship. Each year, the United States-Indonesia Society inaugurates the USINDO award to a person who has contributed significantly to the U.S.-Indonesian bilateral relationship. This year they have chosen to recognize the contributions of Professor Emeritus Mantle Hood, an ethnomusicologist who established a gamelan performance program at UCLA in 1958, spawning a legion of teachers and leaders of the more than 100 gamelan groups in the United States today. A renowned expert in Javanese/Balinese music and culture, Dr. Hood has received honors from the Indonesian government for his research, among them the conferral of the title "ki" (literally "the venerable") in 1986, and membership into the Dharma Kusuma (Society of National Heroes) in 1992. He is among the first non-Idonesians to receive that honor.

Mantle Hood has published over twenty books and book chapters as well as over sixty articles in scholarly journals and encyclopedias. Some of Hood's works include The Ethnomusicologist (1971, 1982), Music in Indonesia (1972), The Nuclear Theme as a Determinant of Patet in Javanese Music (1954), and the film Atumpan: The Talking Drums of Ghana (1964). Professor Hood is still going strong, having just published his seventh novel. He is currently Senior Distinguished Professor at West Virginia University and Professor Emeritus in the Ethnomusicology Department at UCLA.

In 1951 Hood earned both his AB in music and MA in composition from UCLA. As a Fulbright Fellow, Hood studied Indonesian music under Jaap Kunst at the University of Amsterdam, where he received his Ph.D. in 1954. After completing his doctoral work, Hood returned to UCLA and joined the faculty. In 1960 he founded the famous Institute for Ethnomusicology at UCLA and initiated the scholarly series Progress Reports in Ethnomusicology.

Published: Thursday, September 12, 2002