- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Abbreviations
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Interlude
- 3 Born in Africa (1990)
- 4 Tears Run Dry
- 5 Singing in the Shadow of Death
- 6 Music, HIV/AIDS, and Social Change in Nairobi, Kenya
- 7 Interlude
- 8 Using Music to Combat AIDS and Other Public Health Issues in Malawi
- 9 Visual Approaches to HIV Literacy in South Africa
- 10 Ngoma Dialogue Circles (Ngoma-Dice)
- 11 Interlude
- 12 HIV/AIDS Poster Campaigns in Malawi<sup>1</sup>
- 13 Contemporary Uses of the Musical Arts in Botswana’s HIV/AIDS Health Education Initiatives
- 14 “We Are the Loudmouthed HIV-Positive People”
- 15 “C’est Le Wake Up! Africa”
- 16 Singing Songs of AIDS in Venda, South Africa
- 17 Interlude
- 18 Aesthetics and Activism
- 19 A Lady Who is an Akadongo Player
- 20 “What Shall We Do?”
- 21 Swahili AIDS Plays
- 22 Confronting AIDS through Popular Music Cultures in Kenya
- 23 Interlude
- 24 Siphithemba—We Give Hope
- 25 Young and Wise in Accra, Ghana
- 26 Singing as Social Order
- 27 “I’m a Rich Man, How Can I Die?”
- 28 Interlude
- 29 <i>Kwaito</i> and the Culture of AIDS in South Africa
- 30 Positive Disturbance
- 31 “EdzI Ndi Dolo” (“AIDS is Mighty”)
- 32 Representing HIV/AIDS in Africa
- 33 Postlude
- About the Authors
- References
- Index
Singing Songs of AIDS in Venda, South Africa
Singing Songs of AIDS in Venda, South Africa
Performance, Pollution, and Ethnomusicology in a Neo-Liberal Setting
- Chapter:
- (p.193) 16 Singing Songs of AIDS in Venda, South Africa
- Source:
- The Culture of AIDS in Africa
- Author(s):
Fraser G. McNeill
Deborah James
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This chapter describes an HIV/AIDS campaign in Venda, South Africa that employs female peer educators who incorporate and adapt a mix of anti-apartheid, religious, and local musical styles into their public promotion of safer sex. Through the strategic combination of songs from the anti-apartheid struggle, Christian churches and “traditional” repertoires, peer educators attempt a symbolic and material transformation of themselves from unemployed rural women to quasi-social workers. Music is central to this process, not only because it provides an easily accessible and readily understandable medium for the transmission of knowledge, but also because the peer educators claim to “sing about what they cannot talk about.” This campaign, however, has also spurred a musical counter-discourse from a male-dominated solo genre known as zwilombe, which accuses the women’s messages (along with the campaign) as manipulative and exploitative. The chapter highlights the inherent dangers of privileging songs that are rooted in bioscientific worldviews over those which emerge from folk cosmologies of health and/or sickness.
Keywords: songs, HIV/AIDS, Venda, South Africa, peer educators, safer sex, rural women, quasi-social workers, music, zwilombe
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Abbreviations
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Interlude
- 3 Born in Africa (1990)
- 4 Tears Run Dry
- 5 Singing in the Shadow of Death
- 6 Music, HIV/AIDS, and Social Change in Nairobi, Kenya
- 7 Interlude
- 8 Using Music to Combat AIDS and Other Public Health Issues in Malawi
- 9 Visual Approaches to HIV Literacy in South Africa
- 10 Ngoma Dialogue Circles (Ngoma-Dice)
- 11 Interlude
- 12 HIV/AIDS Poster Campaigns in Malawi<sup>1</sup>
- 13 Contemporary Uses of the Musical Arts in Botswana’s HIV/AIDS Health Education Initiatives
- 14 “We Are the Loudmouthed HIV-Positive People”
- 15 “C’est Le Wake Up! Africa”
- 16 Singing Songs of AIDS in Venda, South Africa
- 17 Interlude
- 18 Aesthetics and Activism
- 19 A Lady Who is an Akadongo Player
- 20 “What Shall We Do?”
- 21 Swahili AIDS Plays
- 22 Confronting AIDS through Popular Music Cultures in Kenya
- 23 Interlude
- 24 Siphithemba—We Give Hope
- 25 Young and Wise in Accra, Ghana
- 26 Singing as Social Order
- 27 “I’m a Rich Man, How Can I Die?”
- 28 Interlude
- 29 <i>Kwaito</i> and the Culture of AIDS in South Africa
- 30 Positive Disturbance
- 31 “EdzI Ndi Dolo” (“AIDS is Mighty”)
- 32 Representing HIV/AIDS in Africa
- 33 Postlude
- About the Authors
- References
- Index
