Michael Frishkopf

Performing arts as a social technology for community health promotion in northern Ghana

Objective We present first-phase results of a performing arts public health intervention, ‘Singing and Dancing for Health,’ aiming to promote healthier behaviors in Ghana’s impoverished Northern Region. We hypothesize that live music and dance drama provide a powerful technology to overcome barriers such as illiteracy, lack of adequate media access, inadequate health resources, and entrenched sociocultural attitudes. Our research objective is to evaluate this claim. Methods In this first phase, we evaluated the effectiveness of arts interventions in improving knowledge and behaviors associated with reduced incidence of malaria and cholera, focusing on basic information and simple practices, such as proper hand washing. Working with the Youth Home Cultural Group, we codeveloped two ‘dance dramas’ delivering health messages through dialog, lyrics, and drama, using music and dance to attract spectators, focus attention, infuse emotion, and socialize impact. We also designed knowledge, attitude, and behavior surveys as measurement instruments. Using purposive sampling, we selected three contrasting test villages in the vicinity, contrasting in size and demographics. With cooperation of chiefs, elders, elected officials, and Ghana Health Service officers, we conducted a baseline survey in each village. Next, we performed the interventions, and subsequently conducted follow-up surveys. Using a more qualitative approach, we also tracked a select subgroup, conducted focus group studies, and collected testimonials. Surveys were coded and data were analyzed by Epi Info. Results Both quantitative and qualitative methods indicated that those who attended the dance drama performances were likelier than those who did not attend to list the causal, preventive, and transmission factors of malaria and cholera. Also, the same attendees were likelier than nonattendees to list some activities they do to prevent malaria, cholera, and other sanitation-related diseases, proving that dance dramas were highly effective both in raising awareness and in transforming behaviors. Conclusions As a result of this study, we suggest that where improvements in community health depend primarily on behavioral change, music and associated performing arts – dancing, singing, and drama – presented by a professional troupe offer a powerful social technology for bringing them about. This article is a status report on the results of the project so far. Future research will indicate whether local community–based groups are able to provide equal or better outcomes at lower cost, without outside support, thus providing the capacity for sustainable, localized health promotion.

Folkways in Wonderland: A Cyberworld Laboratory for Ethnomusicology

In this paper we describe a musical cyber world -- a collaborative, immersive virtual environment for browsing musical databases -- together with an experimental design launching a new sub discipline: the ethnomusicology of controlled musical cyberspaces. Research in ethnomusicology, the ethnographic study of music in its socio-cultural environment, has typically been conducted through qualitative fieldwork in uncontrolled, real-world settings. Recently, ethnomusicologists have begun to attend to the study of virtual environments, including pre-existing cyber worlds (such as video games). However, in this paper, we adopt an unprecedented approach by designing a custom musical cyber world to serve as a virtual laboratory for the ethnographic study of music. By constructing an immersive cyber world suitable for ethno musicological fieldwork, we aim for much greater control than has heretofore been possible in ethno musicological research, leading to results that may suggest better ways of designing musical cyber worlds for research, discovery, learning, entertainment, and e-commerce, as well as contributing towards our general understanding of the role of music in human interaction and community-formation. Such controlled research can usefully supplement traditional ethnography in the real world.

“Islamic Music in Africa” as a Tool for African Studies

Abstract Suitably interpreted, “Islamic music in Africa” provides African Studies with a useful analytical tool for probing the relation between affective individual experience and the social structures, values, and cultural concepts which music both reflects and supports in Muslim areas. Nondiscursive Islamic musical diversity has facilitated Islamic expansion by enabling affectively powerful adaptations to local socio-cultural conditions. The sonic practices of Islam constitute central sites for the affectively charged social production of Islam, as locally inflected, and for the contestation of Muslim identity and norms. The diversity of Islamic music also reflects a rich history of cultural interactions, as music is a sensitive barometer of social and historical conditions. Yet diffusions have bestowed a certain musical consistency as well, linking sound practices over vast distances, and underpinning common feelings of Muslim cultural identity in Africa.

Narrowcasting and multipresence for music auditioning and conferencing in social cyberworlds

We describe a musical cyberworld, Folkways in Wonderland, in which avatarrepresented users can find and listen to selections from the Smithsonian Folkways world music collection. When audition is disturbed by cacophony of nearby tracks or avatar conversations, one’s soundscape can be refined since the system supports narrowcasting, a technique which allows information streams to be filtered. Our system supports two different kinds of sound sources: musical selections and avatar conversation (voice-chat). Narrowcasting for music enables aesthetic focus; narrowcasting for talk enables cognitive focus. The former is required for dense presentation of musical sound, the latter for virtual worlds in which many avatars are expected to be able to interact. An active listener can fork self-identified avatars using a novel multipresence technique, locating representatives at locations of interest, each clone capturing respective soundscapes, controlled using narrowcasting functions {self, non-self} × {select (solo), mute, deafen, attend}. Likewise one can participate in a conference and at the same time join a global tour of music. Our music browser is architected to use MX: IEEE 1599, a comprehensive, multilayered, music description standard. Using our cyberworld as a virtual laboratory, we evaluated the effectiveness of narrowcasting when auditioning music and conferencing. Experimental results suggest that narrowcasting and multipresence techniques are useful for collaborative music exploration and improve user experience. We also got positive feedback from the participants regarding narrowcasting representations, variously based on colors, symbols, and icons.

Music of Makran: Traditional Fusion from Coastal Balochistan (review)

their knowledge by reading Aubert’s own book (2004), which includes about 100 pages on the ritual of the trembling of snakes. Another forthcoming publication by Christine Guillebaud deals with various aspects of Puḷḷuvan songs. This book will be particularly useful because it includes a DVD in which songs are depicted in their ritual context. On a personal note, I was extremely glad to listen to this CD because it brought back musical memories from my younger days in Allappuzha, Kerala, where I grew up (Allappuzha is home to many Puḷḷuvan families). Aubert’s work is all the more valuable because the art of the Puḷḷuvan is slowly going out of vogue. In 1998, three years before Aubert’s fieldwork, George S. Paul, a music and dance critic for The Hindu daily, quoted Ambujakshi, a female performer, saying, “It is no longer possible to make both ends meet with this profession of singing alone and further, fabrication of the rare instruments is also beyond our means nowadays” (Paul 1998, 2). Aubert has provided in this CD a set of audio samples that can be used for discussion of such issues as interaction among indigenous traditions, scholarly representations, and music transcription and analysis.