Don't think there are too many oud players in Iowa...
Try flying to a more metropolitan city closer to either coasts....
Don't know if there are any Forum members in Iowa. I Googled "belly dance Des Moines" and saw several links, but no evidence of dancing to live
music. Similarly, I don't know of any oud players in my home town of Sacramento, California, and Sacramento is less than 100 miles from San
Francisco! If you can't get to the East or West Coast you could try Chicago or Detroit (America's most Arab city).
The only major point of interest in Iowa for us Middle Eastern culture freaks is what is claimed to be the oldest standing mosque in the USA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Mosque_of_America Although there is actually an older existing mosque in Brooklyn, NY (which served
Polish-speaking Tatars), the mosque is Cedar Rapids, IA is interesting in that it served a Lebanese Muslim community before WWII, when there were only
about 4 or 5 mosques in the whole USA (but over 115 Syrian and Lebanese Arabic Christian churches!).
