NASHVILLE, Tenn. – In a new book, a professor at Vanderbilt University documents the effective role music and the arts are playing in the fight against AIDS in Uganda.
Singing for Life: HIV/AIDS and Music in Uganda, by Greg Barz, was published in January 2006 by Routledge. The book collects lyrics to songs and performances inspired by the HIV/AIDS pandemic in that country, and includes a CD sampler of Ugandan music.
It’s also the first book of an emerging research field – medical ethnomusicology – that seeks to combine efforts of anthropologists, music specialists, public health policy makers and doctors and other health care workers to fight disease.
“Music and medicine, when they’re coupled together, bring about the greatest effect in many parts of the world in combating disease,” said Barz, a professor of ethnomusicology. “While Americans tend to think of music as entertainment, people in countries like Uganda consider it as being life itself.”
HIV infection rates have fallen from 30 percent to 5 percent in Uganda in the past decade, and Barz argues that efforts to convey good information by storytellers, dancers, musicians and other artisans have played a prominent role. The typical mass media options don’t work in a country where many people have no access.
Barz has been visiting Uganda regularly since 1999.
“What I found in working in villages and towns and cities in Uganda is a need to express reactions musically, emotionally, but also embrace medical interventions using music to effect psychological and emotional changes,” Barz said. “Music is often education in Africa, passing along information. I call it ‘dancing the disease.'”
Barz has tried to intervene to get some musicians to modify their lyrics to give more accurate information about AIDS and HIV.
“Women seem to get it right more often,” Barz said. “I have more trouble with male popular singers who twist the story around so they’re providing more misinformation than good information. For example, it’s very common for male performers to place the blame on women for spreading the disease, and not understanding how the virus is transmitted.
“This needs to be addressed, and it needs to happen very quickly.”
To interview Greg Barz about Singing for Life: HIV/AIDS and Music in Uganda, contact Jim Patterson at 615-343-1271 or jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu.
Media contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu