With little or no public funding, women in the poorest areas of Uganda have helped reduce the rate of HIV infection from 30 percent to 8 percent of the population using only traditional music and dance.
With new support from the U.S. Fulbright Scholar Program, Vanderbilt ethnomusicologist Greg Barz will return to Uganda this summer to continue his study of the effective ways these women’s performance groups de-stigmatize HIV/AIDS, debunk myths and overcome taboos in areas where efforts based on traditional Western medical models have proved largely unsuccessful.
“Dr. Barz is one of four United States scholars to have been offered an African Regional Research Program award in AIDS and AIDS-related research for 2002-03,” said Debra Egan, assistant director for the African/Western Hemisphere Unit, Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES).
The Fulbright grant will fund up to nine months of additional field research beginning this summer. The Fulbright is considered the flagship of the U.S. government’s international educational exchange programs.
What began three years ago as a traditional research trip documenting indigenous, male-dominated music traditions in the Lake Victoria region of Central Africa, took an unanticipated turn when Barz was confronted by women using similar methods to educate other women and children about AIDS. With funding from Vanderbilt, Barz returned to the region the following summer to focus on the links between such efforts by women across the region and the success Uganda has had in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
The World Health Organization estimates more than 28.1 million adults and children were living with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 2001.
“With limited access to education, electricity or radios, for many, essential information is only available through song texts performed by local women’s groups,” said Barz.
“The methods are effective because the locally popular music and dance forms use the dynamic rhythms to attract a crowd in small villages and then rely on straightforward, often graphic, lyrics to de-stigmatize HIV, debunk myths and overcome sexual and religious taboos.
“We can learn a lot from their example,” he said.
More information on Barz’ research, including sound and video samples of the women’s performances, is available in the article “Singing for Life” at Vanderbilt’s on-line research journal Exploration at http://www.exploration.vanderbilt.edu.