Music and The Ebola Epidemic

Sarah Bobrow

Epidemics are not purely medical events – they affect every aspect of daily life for those in areas with active infections. In 2014, many African countries experienced Ebola outbreaks that fundamentally changed how their residents functioned on a day-to-day basis. Health professionals urged the public to adopt new hygiene practices, halt traditional burials, and be responsive to an influx of international medical professionals who descended on local communities all at once. One of the more surprising impacts of the Ebola epidemic, though, was its effect on music. Music was employed as public health technology, was integral to fear management, acted as documentation for beliefs about Ebola during the epidemic, and was affected as a large part of a damaged tourism economy. While it may seem like an unintuitive connection, music allowed public health professionals to access the public at a different level, which proved to be incredibly effective at reducing the spread of disease.

One of the most significant contributions of music during the Ebola Epidemic was its ability to change the public’s behavior. Changing individual behavior is incredibly challenging, and in many instances, it is impossible (Frishkopf 2017, 42). As is the case with many infectious diseases, the most effective preventive measures to reduce the spread of Ebola were the simplest. The biggest intervention that public health officials wanted to stress during this time was good handwashing hygiene – a behavior that is either ingrained in a person’s hygiene routine or it is not. Liberia already had a program in place prior to the Ebola Epidemic that encouraged good sanitation habits, and it was re-employed during the 2014 epidemic. This program was called WASH and it used music as a communication mechanism (Frishkopf 2017, 57).

In the case of the Ebola Epidemic, literacy rates added an extra challenge. Liberia, one of the countries most severely affected by the virus, has a population literacy rate of less than 50% (Liberia 2017). Since public health information dissemination usually relies heavily on written materials, many of the traditional forms of outreach were inaccessible to the public. To combat this issue, popular radio stations began to play songs that were written specifically to provide sanitation and hygiene information interspersed with their regularly scheduled programming. This strategy was especially effective at reaching young people given that the radio stations where much of the Ebola-targeted music aired were hip-hop and pop stations (Blair 2014). The lyrics were also quite straightforward, “Always wash your hands with soap and water. Always cook your food very well. Go to health facility anytime you have headache, fever, pain, diarrhea, rash, red eyes, and vomiting” (Rivera 2017, 66).

While these approaches were effective in part simply because music is a popular outlet through which to reach people, the most successful applications of music in targeting the epidemic included a community engagement component. Both the WASH program songs and the songs played on the radio about Ebola were written by Liberian popstars. While international musicians sometimes play a role in fundraising, what the people affected by the Ebola epidemic needed most was instruction about best practices to reduce the spread of disease. According to researchers John Finn and Joseph Palis, “In the West, there is a long tradition of using the star power of music celebrities, and performances by those artists, to raise funds during and in the aftermath of humanitarian crises.” (Finn and Palis 2015, 784). As a US medical professional put it, though, “If we in the West wanted to save lives, we would send doctors. Or, better yet, we would train Liberian medical professionals. We would build infrastructure, not awareness” (Finn and Palis 2015, 787).

Especially in the case of the Ebola epidemic, it was not funds or international awareness that were most urgently needed, it was information from a trusted source. In the West, there was mass hysteria in the news stemming from misinformation. In other words, no one was unaware of the danger of Ebola in 2014 (Finn and Palis 2015, 782). For that reason, artists who had connections to the communities for whom their music was written automatically came across as more trustworthy. By using local artists for Ebola messaging in songs, the information was more likely to be viewed as evoking a grassroots approach to reducing the spread of disease than overly medicalized, untrustworthy, hysterical information coming from foreign medical professionals (Frishkopf 2017, 43). In this way, music by local artists functioned as an essential component to earning trust.

In the same vein of community engagement approaches, recruiting local musicians and performers also helped to minimize fear during the deadliest periods of the epidemic. In The Gambia, the Kanyelang Women Performers, a local group of musicians made up of women who have experienced infertility or the death of a child, were integral to fear management. The Gambia never had any documented cases of Ebola, but due to its high-risk designation (due to proximity to countries with many cases) and the general fear that was overwhelming the media, Gambians were afraid. The place that the Kanyelang Performers held in their community made them the best possible candidates to do this sort of work: they were widely regarded as excellent communicators, emotionally expressive, and fantastic musicians (McConnell and Darboe 2014, 32).

The main task of the Kanyelang Performers was to try to combat the ecology of fear that was affecting disease response. Especially when a disease is not well understood (as was the case with Ebola at the time), responses to infections are based more on emotions than medical information. When an emotional response to a disease is fear, disgust, and other negative emotions, the disease is stigmatized. This closes circuits of communication and leaves communities less prepared for when the disease does begin to affect them (McConnell and Darboe 2014, 33).

One strategy that the Kanyelang Performers used to achieve their goals was by writing informational songs about Ebola. The structure of the songs was a mixture of a tuneful chorus with an almost spoken, heightened speech verse that packed in helpful information. In one song of theirs, the lyrics for the chorus are, “Let’s all prepare ourselves for it, Ebola disease, listen and protect ourselves.” Those lines are repeated six times throughout the duration of the song. Then, in between the chorus are verses like this: “You will see some have fever, you see some also who vomit, you see some there who get a rash, you see some also, their joints get stiff, you see some also, they have a burning, itching rash. Don’t panic...Let’s not frighten each other because of this information” (McConnell and Darboe 2014, 35).

Even more powerful is the Kanyelang Performers’ ability to evoke a certain response with their music based on cultural knowledge of what particular sounds evoke. Many of the instrumental themes that backed up these lyrics were tunes and configurations played at celebrations like weddings and naming ceremonies. By singing informational songs about Ebola to a tune that the community associates with positive events, the Kayenlang Performers were able to ease people’s fear at least in a subliminal way (McConnell and Darboe 2014, 38).

Listening to music from performers in the most active areas of the epidemic also have researchers a sense historically for what the attitudes towards the epidemic were like at the time. In Liberia, for example, local songwriters made it clear in their lyrics that having to alter traditional burial practices was a big loss for members of the community: “My people, we know our tradition when our people again die, who wan to go near them, who wan hold them, who wan bury them, who wan plait their hair, But this time today in Liberia that rough time on us, o! You know what I mean by that? The emergency. So the Ebola sickness, we see somebody die today, call the nurses and doctors” (Rivera 2017, 66).

Traditional burial practices in some of the most affected countries require family members to wash the bodies of their deceased loved ones. While in most cases there are no complications with that practice, Ebola lived in the body after death, so people were getting infected during their traditional burial procedures. Music sung by local musicians turned out to be one of the only effective ways to earn the trust of the community and allow medical professionals to bury their loved ones (McConnell and Darboe 2014, 33). The emphasis of this issue in both a Kanyelang Performers song and a song by the Liberian Ministry of Health show that it was a prevalent issue that occupied the minds of many during the Ebola epidemic.

Another song highlights just how afraid many people were during the Ebola Epidemic. In one song by a popular rap group, the tempo gets faster and faster to emulate the anxiety that Ebola was causing. The lyrics also encourage fear and try to emphasize that Ebola is not just another illness: “It’s dangerous, oh! Ebola is very wicked. It can kill you quick quick. Be careful how you shaking hands, oh! Be careful who you touch. Ebola is more than HIV/AIDS. It can kill you quick quick. It can kill you fast fast. Ebola!” (Rivera 2017, 66). This song, although delivering dark material, utilizes familiar dance tunes and includes a dance break to try to connect with the community and grab their attention (75).

Unfortunately, there were negative effects on music during the Ebola epidemic as well. The methods that each government employed to try to influence behavior were different, and in Guinea, the government and political response to Ebola caused more fear. While Ebola was frightening, the actions of the government created excessive fear that ended up crushing the economy (Morford 2017, 46). Although tourism only comprises a small part of Guinea’s economy, most international flights to and from Guinea were cancelled and borders were closed at the peak of the epidemic, so tourism became practically impossible (Morford 2017, 47).

In Guinea, one of the biggest forms of tourism is drum and dance tourism. Guinean musicians will host music tourists for three weeks or more while they attend drum and dance workshops. This brings in around $1200-$3000 per tourist, which the year before the Ebola epidemic amounted to $75,000 for one drum and dance group alone. For the musicians involved in hosting tourists, drum and dance tourism accounts for around half of their yearly income (Morford 2017, 48). Since tourism was mostly shut down during the Ebola epidemic, all the musicians involved in music tourism lost significant portions of their income.

The local community also receives an economic boost from music tourists. When international tourists visit Guinea for drum and dance workshops, it is estimated that each individual spends $500 at nearby businesses. For that reason, many local businesses rely on music tourism to be able to make a profit. Music in this case is a pivotal area of the economy, and everyone ended up being hurt by the fact that music tourism slowed (Morford 2017, 48).

Finally, the ability of Guinean drum and dance music to find footholds in other communities was limited by the Ebola epidemic. Guinean drum music has increased in global popularity in recent years, and music tourism is a big contributor to the ability of musicians to be socially and financially mobile enough to bring their music elsewhere. For the past several decades, musicians have been forming romantic relationships with tourists during drum and dance camp sessions. The result was that many Guinean musicians emigrated to where their partners were from using a K-1 visa. Since many music tourists were originally from the United States, some regions (like Seattle) now have strong cultures of Guinean music traditions (Morley 2017, 48-49). This has created an increased knowledge and awareness about drum and dance tourism globally, which in turn increases the interest in drum and dance camps in Guinea. As a result of the Ebola epidemic, however, drum and dance camps experienced multiple years of decreased attendance, and the economies surrounding them were devastated.

Music has always operated beyond its obvious scope. In times of health crisis, music serves as a tool to disseminate information, reduce fear, and reflect attitudes towards disease. Unfortunately, since its effects are so multi-faceted, music is also a vital part of the economy which is easily shut down during health crises. During the Ebola epidemic, musicians participated as public health messengers, which cemented their places as trusted members of their communities. While it is often overlooked, music is a foundational tool in helping to shape public opinion during crises, and in the case of the Ebola epidemic, it was successful in doing so.

Works Cited

Blair, Susan. “Liberia's Hottest Hip-Hop Station Has All the Latest Ebola Music and News.” The World from PRX, September 2, 2014. https://theworld.org/stories/2014-09-01/liberias-hottest-hip-hop-station-has-all-latest-ebols-music-and-news.

Finn, John C., and Joseph Palis. “Introduction: The Medium, the Message, and Media Geography in the 21st Century.” GeoJournal 80, no. 6 (2015): 781–90. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44076333.

Frishkopf, Michael. “Popular Music as Public Health Technology: Music for Global Human Development and ‘Giving Voice to Health’ in Liberia.” Journal of Folklore Research 54, no. 1–2 (2017): 41–86. https://doi.org/10.2979/jfolkrese.54.2.03.

“Liberia.” UNESCO UIS, April 12, 2017. http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/lr.

McConnell, Bonnie B. and Darboe, Buba. “Music and the Ecology of Fear: Kanyeleng Women Performers and Ebola Prevention in The Gambia.” Africa Today 63, no. 3 (2017): 29–42. https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.63.3.03.

Morford, James B.. “Beyond Ebola: Fundraising and the Impact of Ebola on Music and Dance Tourism in Guinea.” Africa Today 63, no. 3 (2017): 45–60. https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.63.3.04.

Rivera, Michael. “Music, Media, and the Ethnopoetics of Two Ebola Songs in Liberia.” Africa Today 63, no. 3 (2017): 63–76. https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.63.3.05.