Singing and Dancing for Health: Traditional music and dance for health education and promotion in rural northern Ghana

short link: http://bit.ly/sngdnc4h

Goals

We aim to create, evaluate, and refine effective music and dance interventions for public health education and promotion in the developing world. In particular, we seek to collaboratively develop and assess the impact of participatory "dance dramas" (comprising music, song, dance, poetry, drama, and comedy) for public health education in northern Ghana, that country's most underdeveloped area, partnering with a Ghanaian performing arts/education NGO experienced in applications of music and dance to development projects.

Thus far, our focus is two critical health care issues: cholera/diarrhea and malaria. (We are also seeking funding to add a third: Ebola, and a fourth centered on Maternal and Neonatal Health.) The research process entails the following steps, in collaboration with Youth Home Cultural Group, an arts-based NGO based in Tamale, Ghana.

Preliminary stages:

• We compose scripts, music, choreography for each of the two issues. Scripts are vetted by public health experts in Canada. These dramas are then extensively rehearsed
• We stage these theatre pieces in a small village (Jenkeriyili) located close to the regional capital of Tamale, and professionally video record them.
• From these recordings, we produce edited, English- subtitled video recordings suitable for broadcast on local, national, or international television, or for distribution via Internet or DVD copies. (See links below.)

Pre-intervention, intervention, post-intervention stages:

• Pre-intervention research. We carry out preliminary health studies in three villages, establishing baseline estimations of knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP surveys) relevant to these health issues, developing rapport, and publicizing the project.
• Interventions and associated research. Then we perform the dance dramas live in each village, alongside workshops encouraging residents’ active participation and learning, enhancing sustainability. These events, gathering as much of each village as possible and including also local village performing groups for greater participatory inclusion, are documented through ethnomusicological fieldwork, to better understand the method's strengths and weaknesses.
• Post-intervention research.
  • Immediately following each intervention we conduct a focus group with Junior High School aged children to find out how they viewed the intervention, what they liked or disliked, and how it could have been improved to become more effective.
  • In the following 6 months, we periodically return to repeat the same KAP health studies. We also conduct "tracking" research, contacting the same individuals periodically to find out about changes in local practices that may be related to either dance drama. In this way, we will be able to assess the impact of our interventions, and to refine them.

This pilot study, conducted over approximately 10 months, will result in presentations, publications, and external funding applications to development agencies including CIHR, DFATD, IDRC, Grand Challenges, Gates, Ford, WHO, Unicef, and others, as opportunities become available.

The results promise great significance to ethnomusicology and global health, in light of three recent trends: (a) exponential growth in "applied" ethnomusicology since the 1990s; (b) advent of a more recent subdiscipline, medical ethnomusicology; (c) global health studies, increasingly recognizing the importance of culturally-sensitized communications and the role of "edu-entertainment" in public health campaigns.

Status (April 2015)

Pre-intervention and post-intervention research, as well as the interventions themselves (performances) is all complete. We are now engaged in an assessment phase. Please see below for some video results.

Research sites and maps

Initial research centers on three villages of varying sizes and locations:

• Tolon (large)
• Ziong (near Nanton; smaller)
• Gbungbaliga (near Yendi; smallest)

Map of all proposed research/performance sites. The three actual research sites are marked in dark green; the video site (Jekeriyili) is marked in light green.

Map of Tolon District, showing some of the smaller outlying villages where we have performed ancillary research.

Video outputs

Local production (subtitled):

Cholera drama (September 2014)

Malaria drama (September 2014)

Excerpt from on-site ethnomusicological media research:

Excerpt of Malaria drama, performed at Ziong, December 2014.

News

Citi MF Online (Ghana)