The Culture of AIDS in Africa: Hope and Healing Through Music and the Arts

by Gregory Barz (Editor), Judah M. Cohen (Editor)

Overview

The Culture of AIDS in Africa enters into the many worlds of expression brought forth across this vast continent by the ravaging presence of HIV/AIDS. Africans and non-Africans, physicians and social scientists, journalists and documentarians share here a common and essential interest in understanding creative expression in crushing and uncertain times. They investigate and engage the social networks, power relationships, and cultural structures that enable the arts to convey messages of hope and healing, and of knowledge and good counsel to the wider community. And from Africa to the wider world, they bring intimate, inspiring portraits of the performers, artists, communities, and organizations that have shared with them their insights and the sense they have made of their lives and actions from deep within this devastating epidemic.

Covering the wide expanse of the African continent, the 30 chapters include explorations of, for example, the use of music to cope with AIDS; the relationship between music, HIV/AIDS, and social change; visual approaches to HIV literacy; radio and television as tools for "edutainment;" several individual artists' confrontations with HIV/AIDS; various performance groups' response to the epidemic; combating HIV/AIDS with local cultural performance; and more. Source material, such as song lyrics and interviews, weaves throughout the collection, and contributions by editors Gregory Barz and Judah M. Cohen bookend the whole, to bring together a vast array of perspectives and sources into a nuanced and profoundly affective portrayal of the intricate relationship between HIV/AIDS and the arts in Africa.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199744480
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/13/2011
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	520
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Gregory Barz is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology, Graduate Dept. of Religion, and African American Studies at Vanderbilt University. His publications include Singing for Life: Music and HIV/AIDS in Uganda (Routledge, 2005); Performing Religion: Negotiating Past and Present in Kwaya Music of Tanzania (Rodopi, 2003), and Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology, Second Edition (co-editor with Timothy Cooley, OUP, 2008).
Judah M. Cohen is the Lou and Sybil Mervis Professor of Jewish Culture and Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. He is the author of Through the Sands of Time: A History of the Jewish Community of St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands (Brandeis/University Press of New England, 2004).

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Culture of AIDS: Hope and Healing Through the Arts in Africa
Gregory Barz and Judah Cohen

Interlude
2. Singing for Life: Songs of Hope, Healing, and HIV/AIDS in Uganda, CD liner notes
Gregory Barz

Part 1 - Reports from the Field
3. Born in Africa - Transcript
John Zaritsky

4. Tears Run Dry: Coping with AIDS through Music in Zimbabwe
Ric Alviso

5. Singing in the Shadow of Death: African Musicians Respond to a Pandemic with Songs of Sorrow, Resistance, Advocacy, and Hope
Jonah Eller-Isaacs

6. Music, HIV/AIDS, and Social Change in Nairobi, Kenya
Kathleen Van Buren

Interlude
7. Song Lyrics from Nyimbo za Edzi [Songs about AIDS]
Jack Allison

Part 2 - HIV/AIDS and the Arts: First Person
8. Using Music to Combat AIDS and Other Public Health Issues in Malawi
E. Jackson Allison, Jr., Lawrence H. Brown III, Susan E. Wilson

9. Visual Approaches to HIV Literacy in South Africa
Annabelle Wienand

10. Ngoma Dialogue Circles (Ngoma-DiCe): Combating HIV/AIDS Using Local Cultural Performance in Kenya
Leonard Mjomba

Interlude
11. To Sing of AIDS in Uganda
Judah Cohen

Part 3 - HIV/AIDS and the Arts: Campaigns and Responses
12. AIDS Poster Campaigns in Malawi
Eckhard Breitinger

13. Contemporary Usses of the Musical Arts in Botswana's HIV/AIDS Health Education Initiatives
Abimbola Cole

14. "We are the Loudmouthed HIV-Positive People": "Siyayinqoba/Beat It!" On South African Television
Rebecca Hodes

15. "C'est le Wake Up! Africa": Two Cases of International HIV/AIDS Edutainment Campaigns in Francophone Africa
Dnaiel B. Reed

16. Singing Songs of AIDS in Venda, South Africa: Performance, Pollution, and Ethnomusicology in a Neo-Liberal Setting
Deborah James and Fraser McNeill

Interlude
17. "Let's Get Together" (Namirembe Post-Test Club)

Part 4 - Case Studies: Single Works and Artists
18. Aesthetics and Activism: Gideon Mendel and the Politics of Photographing the HIV/AIDS Pandemic in South Africa
Michael Godby

19. A Lady Who is an Akadongo Player: Singing Traditionally to Overturn Traditional Authority
Rebekah Emanuel

20. "What Shall We Do?": Oliver Mtukudzi's Songs about HIV/AIDS
Jennifer W. Kyker

21. Swahili AIDS Plays: A Challenge to the Aristotelian Theory on Tragedy
Aldin Mutembei

22. Confronting AIDS Through Popular Music Cultures in Kenya
Mellitus Wanyama and Joseph Basil Okong'o

Interlude
23. Grassroots Organizing and Celebrity Campaigns: The Arts and AIDS Activism in Morocco
Jeffrey Callen

Part 5 - Case Studies: Performance Groups
24. Siphithemba - We Give Hope: Song and Resilience in a South African Zulu HIV/AIDS Struggle
Austin Chinagorom Okigbo

25. Young and Wise in Ghana: A Musical Response to AIDS
Angela Scharfenberger

26. Singing as Social Order: The Expressive Economy of AIDS in Mbarara, Uganda
Judah Cohen

27. "I'm a Rich Man, How Can I Die?": Circus Performances as a Means of HIV/AIDS Education in Ethiopia
Leah Niederstadt

Interlude
28. Interview with VOLSET Youth Drama Group

Part 6 - Popular Media and Politics
29. Kwaito and the Culture of AIDS in South Africa
Gavin Steingo

30. Positive Disturbance: Tafash, Twig, HIV/AIDS, and Hip Hop in Uganda
Gregory Barz and Gerald C. Liu

31. "Edzi ndi dolo" ("AIDS in Mighty"): Singing HIV/AIDS in Malawi, 1980-2008
John Chipembere Lwanda

32. Representing HIV/AIDS in Africa: Pluralist Photography and Local Empowerment
Roland Bleiker and Amy Kay

Interlude
33. "Interlude"
Patricia Tang

About the Authors
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

"...must reading for anyone involved in the global fight against HIV/AIDS, a book destined to become both popular and a classic text... Within its pages are precious stories of resilience, courage, and human-dignity-preserved during a crisis unimaginable to the average citizen of the industrialized world, or even to health providers and to artists." - Dr. Clyde Lanford Smith, MD, MPH, DTM&H, FACP, President, Doctors for Global Health

"The central strength of the book is that the subject is meaningful and important to human life, in a word - it matters, which is unfortunately too often not the case." - Benjamin Koen, editor, The Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethnomusicology

"Whether explicitly or by example of their work, the authors of this volume all make impassioned calls for further work. By amplifying the diverse perspectives and media that shape The Culture of AIDS in Africa, this collection constitutes an outstanding contribution to understanding the impact of music and visual arts on illness and wellness. It will surely impact future directions of medical ethnomusicology, and it should become a useful resource in the arts, humanities, international studies, and allied social sciences." —Journal of Musicological Research

From the Publisher