City Lore’s staff consists of professional folklorists (Steve Zeitlin, the founder and executive director, Elena Martínez and Amanda Dargan), historians (Marci Reaven), photographers (Martha Cooper), ethnomusicologists (Roberta Singer and Lois Wilcken), and arts and education specialists (Anika Selhorst).
She continued her studies with National Living Treasures from The National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts in Seoul, as well as with Korea's leading ethnomusicologists, eventually earning a B.A. degree in Korean traditional music from Seoul National University in 1980.
In 1968, Dariush Safvat and Nur-Ali Borumand helped form the Center for Preservation and Propagation of Iranian Music with the help of Reza Ghotbi, director of NIRT (National Iranian Radio-Television), an act credited with saving traditional music in the 1970s by other ethnomusicologists, including Nelly Caron, Tran Van Khe, and Hormoz Farhat.
Before the work of SEM’s founders in the 1950s, several efforts in Europe had taken place through the work of dozens of musicologists and those who would eventually be considered ethnomusicologists, including Frances Densmore, Helen Roberts, and George Herzog.