By Judah M. Cohen |
The performers, who are TASO clients, sang choral songs, rousing the audience to fight AIDS, to get tested for HIV, and to remember that everyone–including priests, doctors, and school headmasters–is susceptible to the disease. They enacted a thirty-five-minute drama showing both how HIV is transmitted and how people with HIV should be treated. They presented a "folksong" dramatizing the story of a woman ostracized by her family because she had HIV. One member of the group gave a personal testimony on how he acquired HIV and what he was doing to live with it. In between segments, the group's director answered questions about HIV from the audience. Then the group closed by dancing the region's folkdance, leaving the crowd of several hundred on its feet cheering.
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| The Mbarara TASO performing group giving a community presentation (from the TASO 2004 calendar). |
A TASO Drama Group presentation is typically about three hours long and takes up the afternoon at the village or secondary school where the group performs. After a brief introduction, the group begins with a series of four to five minute-long choral songs. Most of these songs have direct, simple titles and lyrics (such as "Fight, Fight AIDS" and "Let's Get Together, AIDS Cannot Win"), follow a verse/chorus format, have upbeat tempo, and are almost as often in English as they are in Runyankole. Members of the Drama Group typically perform these songs in two rows while wearing khaki uniforms and TASO or red ribbon lapel pins. The only instruments they use for the choral songs, if they use instruments at all, are percussive: usually drums and sometimes a small box-shaped shaker.
One of the most powerful examples of this genre that I witnessed was a choral version of Ugandan pop star Philly Lutaaya's 1989 song "Alone." Lutaaya, who died of AIDS in the same year, was one of the first public figures to raise awareness about the disease. "Alone" has since become an anthem for AIDS workers across Uganda. Watching the Drama Group members perform with their hands on their hearts to a hushed audience, it became clear to me that this song (and others in its genre) provided a medium for listeners and performers to connect with a national, mass-mediated style–one that is helping contextualize the epidemic as something that is itself widespread and international.
Later in the afternoon, the Drama Group presents what it calls the "folksong." Performers, typically wearing traditional costumes, line up in a single semicircle behind a set of drummers, and provide sung commentary on a story that individuals act out in front of them. The story the TASO Mbarara Drama Group developed for 2004 provides a good example of a typical plot: a wife and husband are feeling weak and sick, but do not know why. The husband conjectures his malaise must be spiritual payback for stealing and eating a cow. Enter three friends, accomplices in the crime, all scratching furiously to indicate they too have been stricken with disease. The group calls in a "witch doctor," who gives them potions, scores their skin and uses other incantations in an attempt to cure them. But, warns the chorus, while some people rely on this kind of treatment, it does not work. Instead, you should go to your local TASO center or AIDS clinic where you can now be treated with anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs). The folksong ends with all the characters dancing to indicate ARVs coursing through their system, and thanking outside sources for making them available. Throughout, the folksong presents a sense of localness and an intimate knowledge of the region's musical and folk practices.
The final segment of an afternoon presentation is the folkdance, described to me as a way for the group to celebrate and communicate its vitality to the audience. Words and melody, while present, are regarded as less important here than the form of the piece and the drumbeat that controls it. Throughout my time with the group no one tried to translate the lyrics sung behind the folk dance; the words eventually become inaudible anyway. Audiences consistently react vociferously to the dancers' movements and pack in close to the stage in order to indicate their interest. That such activity takes place in a show devoted to HIV/AIDS awareness highlights the breadth of cultural expression used to frame and deliver the message.
I provide here only a glimpse into the deep and complex relationship music has with AIDS in Ugandan society. Not only is music a crucial factor in disseminating information about HIV/AIDS, but it also helps Ugandans provide information about AIDS research and treatments available in a cultural context. It also represents another reality in understanding the way those infected by the virus tell of the AIDS epidemic in their country. Music in this context is not a "therapy," nor is it a way to alleviate pain. Rather, it serves an important role in negotiating community values that will likely lead people to make crucial choices about their own health. Understanding how music factors into the lives and activities of those whom it surrounds would go far in bringing doctors more intimately into the cultures and lives of the people they so much want to help.
— Judah went to Uganda with his wife Rebecca Cohen, during her one-month medical elective at the Mbarara University Teaching Hospital in Uganda as a Montefiore Medical Center resident and a DGH volunteer. The TASO Mbarara Drama Group has an audio tape of their songs available–as do several of the other regional TASO Drama Groups. All proceeds fund further Drama Group activities. For more information and contacts for the various chapters, visit www.tasouganda.org.
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