Orality, Music and HIV/AIDS: Interrogating the Malawi Popular Public Spher

Lwanda, J. (2003) Orality, Music and HIV/AIDS: Interrogating the Malawi Popular Public Spher. In: African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific Annual Conference 2003: Africa on a Global Stage: Politics, History, Economics and Culture, Adelaide, Australia, 01-03 Oct 2003,

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Publisher's URL: https://afsaap.org.au/assets/Lwanda.pdf

Abstract

This paper argues Western derived research models have sought and continue to seek to situate gender and sexual discourse in overt forms, especially when emphasising public health aspects. Using these models many issues pertaining to culture, politics, sex and other personal and communal issues become hidden or invisible. Using qualitative and quantitative evidence from my PhD research of popular discourse in Malawi, and using some evidence from Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, I argue that these perceived secret or invisible issues can be explained by the historical, social and cultural modes of communication, allied to other factors like male/female and intra-female power relations. Significant issues of sexual and medical concerns, for example, were ‘hidden’ in the easy to decode public social sphere. Using a historical model of the colonial and postcolonial construction of this social public sphere in southern and central Africa I was able to demonstrate that key messages relating to sexuality and sexual behaviour can be easily found in social discourse, from where they can be exploited for health promotion purposes. This essay, part of a larger study, argues for the concept of a musical and oral public sphere 1 where contesting and convergent received, perceived and emerging cultural ideas and concepts are both deposited and withdrawn. This musical and oral public sphere, we suggest, functions - apart from its entertainment role - as a tool of cultural continuity, re-invention, hybridity, diversity and social-cultural reproduction, construction and expression.

Item Type:Conference Proceedings
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Lwanda, Dr John Lloyd
Authors: Lwanda, J.
Subjects:H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
M Music and Books on Music > M Music
R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine
College/School:College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences

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