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

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, and humor) 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. We focus on two critical health care issues: cholera/diarrhea and malaria. We compose scripts, music, choreography; produce subtitled DVDs; carry out preliminary health studies in five villages, establishing baseline estimations of knowledge, attitudes, and practices relevant to these health issues, developing rapport, and publicizing the project; then perform dance dramas live in each village, alongside workshops encouraging residents’ active participation and learning, enhancing sustainability. These events are documented through ethnomusicological public health fieldwork, to better understand their strengths and weaknesses. Two months later, we return to repeat the same health studies. 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. The results promise great significance to ethnomusicology and global health, in light of three recent trends: (a) exponential growth in "applied" ethnomusicology; (b) medical ethnomusicology; (c) global health studies, increasingly recognizing the importance of culturally-sensitized communications.