Suchergebnisse

Music, Culture, and the Politics of Health is an ethnographic work that explores the social, cultural, and political dynamics that impinge upon the HIV/AIDS discourse in South Africa and how they find expression in music. The book reveals the interconnections of the local and global culture and politics of HIV/AIDS.

AbstractThe Siphithemba Choir, an HIV/AIDS support group at the McCord Mission Hospital in Durban, South Africa, uses songs that conflate "Africa" and "Black Race" (abantu abamnyama)or "Black Nation" (Umnyama yezwe) to perform their experience of HIV/AIDS, thus signaling global ethnic/racial consciousness in the context of the HIV/AIDS discourse. This paper argues that the musical referencing of race and ethnicity by this group of HIV-positive South Africans could be explained as a function of related factors: the nature of the AIDS virus, the history and lingering effects of apartheid, the continuing interracial acrimony in the post-apartheid environment, and the global politics of AIDS. A combination of these factors has inevitably impacted how HIV/AIDS is perceived and interpreted through the lens of race. Hence the Siphithemba Choir's musical performance is analyzed in this paper as an expressive articulation of an African and Black experience of AIDS, and a performance of Black identity in the context of the global AIDS pandemic.

This paper is an ethnomusicological and media studies collaborative study that discusses the politics of representation on media health images, especially HIV/AIDS in Africa, and how a South African AIDS support group and choral ensemble offers a counter-narrative to the images that are seen in the Western media. Using ethnographic data on the group's organization, music events, and interviews with choir members, we argue that Siphithemba Choir's story is a narrative of self-representation that subverts the appropriation of their story by the scientific community, and counters the helpless image of HIV-infected individuals that often comprise the face of HIV/AIDS in Africa in the mainstream media.