The Culture of AIDS in Africa

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 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.

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 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).

- 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 African