Music and Aids: An Exploration of HIV/Aids And the Use of Music as a Tool for its Prevention among the Luo Tribe of Kenya 1980-2006

Documental evidence situates HIV/aids as having been discovered in the late 1980(Muraah and Kiarie 2001; Ogot 2004;kamaara 2005). It attracted little public interest in Kenya then, for it was viewed as “ foreign” disease, one that affected “others”. Initially it was viewed as a disease of the homosexuals, an alien and taboo subjects for Kenyans (Muhoma 2006). Then it became a disease of Ugandans (Muraah &Kiarie 2001:10), when stories of slim (the name given to AIDS in Uganda supposedly because of weight loss among it sufferers) began to appear in the local press. It was only in September 1984 that the medical community was to officially learn of the first reported case of AIDS in Kenya. (Muhoma 2006)

The reason HIV/Aids has become the leading global health issue is not so much because those infected die and there is no cure or vaccine, but more so because of the alarming high speed with which it spreads. HIV/aids remains a major concern in Kenya because of relatively high prevalence rates reported among adult populations and significantly higher rates among the youth (Ministry of Health, 2001). The principle mode of transmission of HIV in the country is through heterosexual contact. This accounts for 75 per cent of all HIV infections in Kenya. Some additional facts about HIV/Aids in Kenya is that some 25 million people have died of Aids since 1981. Women in Africa have surpassed men in infection (UnAids report, 2006). In the year 2000, the government declared the pandemic a national disaster. With these facts in mind, HIV/Aids is certainly constructed as a gender issue not only in Kenya, but Africa at large and this paper will try to examine the changing dynamics of its representation and how music plays a crucial role as far as AIDS issues are concerned in Kenya.

Everywhere in the world, music is one of the most important cultural expressions, and even more so in Africa where societies are only partially literate. In Kenya like else where in the world, music occupies a central place in serving to fulfill pertinent social, economic and political functions in groups of people from varied cultural context. Creative artists, and especially musicians have been on the forefront in the campaign against the disease through their various composition and lyrics. As members of a wider society, musicians have greatly utilized their artistic forms to express the basic value and goals of society on the prevailing need to curb the HIV/Aids scourge that now threatens to wipe out the whole human race. Unlike other purely vocal communications, musical texts are widely gaining prominence as one of the central components in the campaign  (Wafula, 2001)

Culturally, HIV/Aids has been seen and   represented as chira (a cultural disease which affects people who have not adhered to the cultural taboos of the Luo society of Kenya) It has also been viewed and constructed as a disease first for the Africans, the youths who are sexually active, the rural illiterates, and more so as a disease which is brought mainly by the women. This paper therefore examines how music as a creative art has been used in the articulation of issues concerning the HIV/Aids pandemic in Kenya. This paper further highlights how HIV/Aids has been represented and constructed culturally among the Luo society of Kenya.

REFERENCES:

Ministry of Health (MOH) Kenya.2001 Aids in Kenya, Nairobi: MOH

Muhoma,C (2006) Masculinity in the Arts: An Exploration of HIV/Aids in Selected Kenyan Literary Texts.A Paper delivered at the CODESRIA Gender institute, Dakar Senegal 12^th –16^th  June 2006

Muraah, W & Kiarie,W (2001) HIV and Aids , Nairobi: English Press Ltd.

Ogot , B (2004) Politics and the Aids Epidemic in Kenya 1983-2003, Kisumu: Anyange Press

Wafula, P (2001) Bridging the Gap: Music and the HIV/Aids Campaign in Kenya and the U.S since 1990. A paper Presented during the regional KAMESA conference held at the Njoro Egerton Agricultural Hotel, Nakuru, Kenya  August 12^th –17^th  2001

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