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Print Price: $80.50

Format:
Paperback
528 pp.
23 illustrations, 3 mm x 3 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199744480

Publication date:
October 2011

Imprint: OUP US

The Culture of AIDS in Africa

Hope and Healing Through Music and the Arts

Edited by Gregory Barz and Illustrated by Judah M. Cohen

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 Baz 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.

Readership : The Culture of AIDS in Africa will find widespread interest across fields: ethnomusicology, African studies, human rights, medicine, and the general public concerned about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa and globally. Adoptions will be seen into graduate and undergraduate seminars.

Introduction
1. Gregory Barz and Judah Cohen: The Culture of AIDS: Hope and Healing Through the Arts in Africa
Interlude
2. Gregory Barz: Singing for Life: Songs of Hope, Healing, and HIV/AIDS in Uganda, CD liner notes
Part 1 - Reports from the Field
3. John Zaritsky: Born in Africa - Transcript
4. Ric Alviso: Tears Run Dry: Coping with AIDS through Music in Zimbabwe
5. Jonah Eller-Isaacs: Singing in the Shadow of Death: African Musicians Respond to a Pandemic with Songs of Sorrow, Resistance, Advocacy, and Hope
6. Kathleen Van Buren: Music, HIV/AIDS, and Social Change in Nairobi, Kenya
Interlude
7. Jack Allison: Song Lyrics from Nyimbo za Edzi [Songs about AIDS]
Part 2 - HIV/AIDS and the Arts: First Person
8. E. Jackson Allison, Jr., Lawrence H. Brown III, Susan E. Wilson: Using Music to Combat AIDS and Other Public Health Issues in Malawi
9. Annabelle Wienand: Visual Approaches to HIV Literacy in South Africa
10. Leonard Mjomba: Ngoma Dialogue Circles (Ngoma-DiCe): Combating HIV/AIDS Using Local Cultural Performance in Kenya
Interlude
11. Judah Cohen: To Sing of AIDS in Uganda
Part 3 - HIV/AIDS and the Arts: Campaigns and Responses
12. Eckhard Breitinger: AIDS Poster Campaigns in Malawi
13. Abimbola Cole: Contemporary Usses of the Musical Arts in Botswana's HIV/AIDS Health Education Initiatives
14. Rebecca Hodes: "We are the Loudmouthed HIV-Positive People": "Siyayinqoba/Beat It!" On South African Television
15. Dnaiel B. Reed: "C'est le Wake Up! Africa": Two Cases of International HIV/AIDS Edutainment Campaigns in Francophone Africa
16. Deborah James and Fraser McNeill: Singing Songs of AIDS in Venda, South Africa: Performance, Pollution, and Ethnomusicology in a Neo-Liberal Setting
Interlude
17. "Let's Get Together" (Namirembe Post-Test Club)
Part 4 - Case Studies: Single Works and Artists
18. Michael Godby: Aesthetics and Activism: Gideon Mendel and the Politics of Photographing the HIV/AIDS Pandemic in South Africa
19. Rebekah Emanuel: A Lady Who is an Akadongo Player: Singing Traditionally to Overturn Traditional Authority
20. Jennifer W. Kyker: "What Shall We Do?": Oliver Mtukudzi's Songs about HIV/AIDS
21. Aldin Mutembei: Swahili AIDS Plays: A Challenge to the Aristotelian Theory on Tragedy
22. Mellitus Wanyama and Joseph Basil Okong'o: Confronting AIDS Through Popular Music Cultures in Kenya
Interlude
23. Jeffrey Callen: Grassroots Organizing and Celebrity Campaigns: The Arts and AIDS Activism in Morocco
Part 5 - Case Studies: Performance Groups
24. Austin Chinagorom Okigbo: Siphithemba - We Give Hope: Song and Resilience in a South African Zulu HIV/AIDS Struggle
25. Angela Scharfenberger: Young and Wise in Ghana: A Musical Response to AIDS
26. Judah Cohen: Singing as Social Order: The Expressive Economy of AIDS in Mbarara, Uganda
27. Leah Niederstadt: "I'm a Rich Man, How Can I Die?": Circus Performances as a Means of HIV/AIDS Education in Ethiopia
Interlude
28. Interview with VOLSET Youth Drama Group
Part 6 - Popular Media and Politics
29. Gavin Steingo: Kwaito and the Culture of AIDS in South Africa
30. Gregory Barz and Gerald C. Liu: Positive Disturbance: Tafash, Twig, HIV/AIDS, and Hip Hop in Uganda
31. John Chipembere Lwanda: "Edzi ndi dolo" ("AIDS in Mighty"): Singing HIV/AIDS in Malawi, 1980-2008
32. Roland Bleiker and Amy Kay: Representing HIV/AIDS in Africa: Pluralist Photography and Local Empowerment
Interlude
33. Patricia Tang: "Interlude"
About the Authors
References
Index

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Gregory Barz is an Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology in the Graduate Deptartment 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).

The Oxford Handbook of Medical Ethnomusicology - Edited by Benjamin D. Koen, Edited by Jacqueline Lloyd, Gregory Barz and Karen Brummel-Smith

Shadows in the Field - Gregory F. Barz and Timothy J. Cooley
Shadows in the Field - Gregory F. Barz and Timothy J. Cooley
Music in East Africa - Gregory Barz
Making Sense - Margot Northey and Joan McKibbin

Special Features

Conferences/Organizations: AMS, SEM.
Diverse contributions from Africans and non-Africans, physicians and social scientists, journalists and documentarians, etc.
Intimate portraits of the performers, artists, communities and organizations that hosted the researchers.
Deeply affective portrait of the relationship between HIV/AIDS and the arts in Africa.