Music and Culture in Entertainment Education
This chapter investigates the role of popular songs, music performers, and music-based interventions in entertainment education, arguing that music is a participatory communication medium that allows local voices to be heard in the development of culturally relevant behavior change communication programs. Based on research and experience with the Africa Stop Ebola song and community engagement campaign during the 2014/2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, this chapter presents theoretical reflections and practical recommendations on how to incorporate music into communication and community engagement interventions for health and development campaigns.
Popular songs have inspired and accompanied social movements, serving as a soundtrack to the battle for social change. In the area of entertainment-education (EE), songs are often used in interventions to spread information and encourage people to alter their behavior. However, an examination of the use of music in entertainment-education reveals that most initiatives use music as an extra marketing tool rather than a core component.
Entertainment-education focuses on the use of “persuasive educational messages” in entertainment programming to improve audience engagement and encourage behavior change (Brown & Singhal, 1999). Since its start, EE’s primary purpose has been to incorporate educational messages into entertainment genres in order to improve knowledge, modify attitudes and behaviors, confront social concerns, and achieve good social change.
However, this strategy has promoted the development of EE programs based on Western philosophy and values (Dutta, 2008). It often imposes a predetermined agenda on developing nations, prioritising health and social concerns that may not always represent the needs and values of the target consumers. Televised soap operas, a kind of entertainment that employs drama to engage viewers, have proven a highly successful means of reaching people in the developing world, but the plots universalize Western ideals and conventions while ignoring local audiences’ social and health issues. Narrative theory holds that tales reflect identities and make meaning of experiences via social interaction.
Narratives provide a framework for social change communication that differs from one-way models by representing events and people in a recognizable structure confined in place and time (Larkey & Hecht, 2010). Although EE’s technique is often based on narrative storytelling, when EE initiatives are created without the participation of locals, they benefit powerful organizations’ social and economic goals. In this context, an alternative culture-centered approach contends that the communication process should begin with those who are experiencing the social and health issues at hand; the goal of social change communication—and entertainment-education—should be to create communication spaces in which social and health issues can be discussed and contested in order to create communication campaigns that are meaningful and relevant to local communities (Dutta, 2008).
Participatory communication rejects the assumption that individual and collective involvement in the communication process may cause changes in societal norms and attitudes about collective choices. Instead, these transformations rely on a social and political framework that allows local voices to be heard while also encouraging critical engagement and awareness in order for communities to recognize their own issues, develop knowledge, and push their own goals and solutions (Chambers, 1997). Participation can help define a community’s communication needs and lead to the creation of culture-centered entertainment campaigns that synthesize information in a format that joins different levels of thought, feeling, and behavior, and uses cultural references and linguistic diversity to ensure that communication is meaningful and reaches the poorest and most disenfranchised.
Participation in music events—songwriting, performances, and contests—allows the general public to participate in social acts that need group learning and cooperation. This technique promotes the co-creation and distribution of culturally relevant songs that help people make sense of issues and communicate solutions. In a context where traditional music is under threat from dominant forms of commercial music and sociopolitical control, allowing marginalized social groups to create songs can help their voices be heard and counter the dominant discourses present in other forms of communication. These cultural acts have the potential to influence society by increasing awareness and elevating the voices of the marginalized (Dutta & Dutta, 2019).
Music-Based Communication.
Music-based communication initiatives motivate people for a particular social concern that requires a coordinated public response. Music artists write songs that represent the perspectives of individuals involved. Compared to other forms of EE, music interventions activate cognitive, emotional, empathetic, and culture-centered communication, which is built on three pillars to advance social change: (1) music as a unique form of human communication that resonates with audiences, (2) a music artist’s celebrity capital, and (3) public participation in music activities.
The Power of Music
Music, like spoken language, was one of the earliest human evolutionary features for social communication and has a considerable impact on the biological, psychological, and social variables that form individual personality and emotional memory (Janata, Tomic, & Rakowski, 2007). Music performance has been linked to emotional capacity development and the formation of psychosocial notions of self and social identity (Miranda, 2013). Music, as part of a common language, system of ideas, family and social institutions, helps establish cultural borders and offers a shared past that defines values; for example, national anthems give people with a cohesive message that remembers common history, pride, and a feeling of belonging.
Song, as a form of spontaneous communication, expresses the desires and concerns of composers and traditional performers, embodying the reality of their social surroundings and reflecting popular story constructions. Thus, songs may be an acceptable instrument for facilitating communication among groups who favor oral forms of communication over those that do not represent local culture, language, or values. Some popular songs contain narratives with significant symbolic value that respond to social situations, and by leveraging music-making as a socially acceptable cultural practice, songs can remind community members about health risks and suggest ways to avoid them, especially when people discuss health narratives in songs (Panter-Brick, Clarke, Lomas, Pinder, & Lindsay, 2006).
The popularity of songs indicates their ability to articulate common sentiments, emotions, and frustrations. Some music genres (for example, hip hop and reggae) are cultural forms of resistance that exploit political abuse to mobilize public opinion and attitudes. With greater availability to music via online streaming services and broadcast radio stations in remote locations with poor internet connection, songs may be seen as a communication capsule capable of reaching audiences of all ages, especially in multilingual communities. Song repetition enhances the possibility of message transmission in low-literacy environments, therefore songs may be a more delicate and attractive format than repeated directives from authorities about health dangers (Bekalu & Eggermont, 2015).
Celebrity Capital
As music performers acquire media exposure and public focus changes to their personal lives and ideas, some become music superstars, which may be leveraged to mobilize the public for social action. Celebrity capital is defined as media prominence and the associated influence that may be exploited to promote companies, causes, and institutions (Driessens, 2013). According to social cognition theory, identification is the process by which people form particular bonds with others, copy their lifestyle, follow their verbal advice, and adopt their actions and beliefs; this perceived connection may lead to opinion change (Bandura, 2002). Thus, the relationship between music superstars and fans evolves over time, fostering emotional bonds and trust.
Furthermore, source credibility theory holds that the credibility of information is determined by the information provider’s perceived trustworthiness and knowledge (Hovland and Weiss, 1951). Individuals may identify with and trust celebrities, resulting in a parasocial connection, in which audiences perceive closeness with a celebrity (Fraser & Brown, 2002; Horton & Wohl, 1956). As celebrities share their personal experiences and support for social concerns, fans believe that supporting such causes fulfills the celebrities’ desires, which may encourage followers to alter their views and urge for others to do the same.
Public Participation in Music Activities
Music events that allow for engagement between artists, fans, and development and health actors may foster the development of critical thinking, collaboration, and empowerment, which Freire termed as a ‘problem-posing’ approach to education (1970). Music-based interventions, which engage artists and audiences in discourse and mutual learning, may help local voices be heard, contribute to collective empowerment, and assist communities in defining their objectives and priorities. Music-based interventions, such as collaborative songwriting and other types of celebrity activism, may allow the co-creation of messages based on the needs and understanding of organizations seeking social change. In this process, fans identify with the musical output, personality, values, and views of music superstars, which facilitates community participation.
This connection creates the circumstances for the public to participate in discussion that may result in changes in opinion and conduct. In the context of historical, political, and social divisions in culturally diverse societies—as is the case in many low- and middle-income countries—musicians with a large fan base may be able to translate and disseminate information by reducing complex ideas to simple stories in song. Music superstars are well-known opinion leaders who may mobilize the audience via their music and advocacy for social change (Pratt, 2009). Music, via the involvement of local music artists and public interaction, provides an alternative type of entertainment-education to dominant forms of EE that copy Western ideals and behavioral patterns that are not anchored in local culture (Dutta & Dutta, 2019).
Africa, Stop Ebola.
To put these concepts into perspective, I’ll talk about my work on Africa Stop Ebola (ASE), an entertainment-education intervention in which a group of West African musicians collaborated to develop a song to inspire community involvement in response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. I co-wrote and co-produced the song, which was led by Ivorian reggae musician Tiken Jah Fakoly and included the artists Amadou and Mariam, Salif Keita, Oumou Sangare, Sia Tolno, Barbara Kanam, Mory Kanté, Mokobé, Markus, Didier Awadi, and Kandia Kora. The song was produced as a collaborative composition, with me serving as facilitator and researcher. As a facilitator, I researched the important causes in Guinea’s societal resistance to Ebola, compiled a list of “topics” to address in the song, and collaborated in the studio with the musicians to record and edit each of the 12 performers’ verses.
Based on Ebola reports that suggested popular distrust in health personnel and a general loss of public optimism in finding a cure, we picked these essential ideas as the core topics to be addressed in the song. As a result, the song’s purpose was to convey two key messages: first, to urge people to trust the health professionals responding to the crisis, and second, to instill faith that the problem will be addressed. The song also includes behavioral directions such as “don’t touch the sick, don’t touch the dead” and “avoid shaking hands and be safe” to encourage preventative practices. The song’s words were meant to serve as a reminder to listeners of the need of listening to health actors participating in the epidemic response. We asked each artist to compose an eight-bar stanza in their favorite language that addressed or underlined these two main topics. The resulting song included verses in French, Malinké, Soussou, Banbara, and Lingala, as well as the choruses “Ebola, invisible enemy” and “Ebola, trust the doctors.” The song was released as a music video (Fakoly et al., 2014), and it was reported in the international media as a positive strategy to promote Ebola prevention in West Africa (Jones, 2014; Kozin, 2014).
Africa Stop Ebola Song Lyrics
Africa is saddened to watch our family perish. Do not touch our ill; do not touch the dying. Everyone is in danger, young and old, and we must act for our family.
Chorus: Ebola, invisible.
Ebola, you are our adversary. If you feel unwell, the doctors will assist you, I can tell you. There is hope to end Ebola; believe the physicians.
Chorus: Ebola, trust physicians.
Ebola is not good; consult a doctor.
Chorus
Take Ebola seriously. It’s an extremely dangerous sickness. When she approaches you, you will die. As soon as you notice the symptoms, contact the physicians. They can assist you. Wash your hands often and avoid shaking hands with others.
I ask you, dear parents, to accept the counsel of medical experts. Ebola has come to harm us; let us respect their advise.
Ebola, you murder our people and cause misery in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but we will beat you; let us stay standing.
Get up, get up, Ebola is an issue for us, we cannot welcome someone, we cannot kiss someone. It does not imply that someone shames you; it’s just a fact.
Ebola has become an issue for us today, and I implore all physicians in Africa to wake up; Ebola has really become a problem for us.
Chorus
Once again, we talk about tragedy, like a false note in the melody, Ebola, we thought you were long gone, you walk in the debauchery sowing disease, we will not run away from you, we will not bury ourselves, because we know we have ways to get away, we’re going to get hooked, we’re not plague, we’re going to get together, we will fire you!
Many of them have been able to get admission to hospitals; some who have been treated are no longer infectious; and others have remained at home while the disease spreads. Oh my God! Mama Africa, stand up and remain together, like we are accustomed to doing for our prior struggles, and Ebola will also be beaten.
Another tragedy strikes the continent; Africa needs vaccines and medication; is hope for them possible? Is it essential to shut our eyes and ignore them? (No!) So we band together for a noble cause, mobilize, and burst down the doors. Ebola, I promise to hunt you until you depart. Africa needs the vaccine to recover.
Chorus
The song’s promotion in international media resulted in a strategic partnership with the medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF France), which used the song and the image of the ASE artist collective in their awareness campaign and fundraising efforts to combat Ebola in West Africa. As a consequence, the campaign was nominated for Fighting Ebola: A Grand Challenge for Development, an innovation competition that granted funds to undertake an intervention in the form of a song contest in Conakry, Guinea (USAID 2015).
I collaborated with others to develop a participatory communication intervention in the form of a song contest to encourage local artists in Conakry, Guinea, to write songs to promote Ebola prevention. To promote the song contest and attract local musicians, we launched a social marketing campaign that included TV and radio advertising, posters, pamphlets, and social media postings. Over 250 local musicians auditioned, and 14 were chosen to attend workshops with health promotion professionals and music coaches to help them produce creative songs about Ebola.
Through this technique, local artists were able to communicate with health professionals, allowing both sides to explain their thoughts and convey their perspectives. However, the musicians developed the final lyrical material for the songs, which featured a variety of points of view and music genres (for example, gospel, reggae, traditional music, and Afro-pop). To wrap off the intervention and pick a group of songcontest winners, we held a final public event that was filmed for TV broadcast and internet streaming, during which artists sang their songs and discussed their personal experiences with Ebola (Africa Stop Ebola, 2015). The public event was presented by Tiken Jah Fakoly and Mory Kanté, both worldwide music personalities with significant cultural links to Guinea.
The songcontest’s affiliation with the local MSF office may have helped improve health workers’ image in the local communities by negotiating reciprocity and trust with local music artists who represented civil society, thereby breaking down the barrier between health institutions and civilians. Workshops and partnerships with other artists and health professionals to produce song lyrics resulted in a true engagement process that assisted local musicians in better understanding the social and behavioral problems of Ebola prevention. In this perspective, the songcontest process was more essential than the songs themselves since it provided an opportunity for conversation, self-expression, and knowledge development. The resultant songs told a story about Ebola prevention from the perspective of the populations impacted. Many of the ensuing songs encouraged faith in the health system and avoided interaction with outsiders, both of which were heavily pushed by health players. However, the songs’ appeal to the public began with local culture, which sought to make sense of the problem and persuade the people to avoid the sickness.
In this intervention, I used action research technique to facilitate a discourse between local musicians and some of the health personnel responding to the crisis. To investigate the effect of the intervention in Ebola prevention, I captured events in video format, surveyed the general population on their knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, and interviewed health professionals (Chirinos-Espin, 2019). Through this procedure, I discovered that societal opposition to social interventions to manage Ebola stemmed from earlier bad experiences with ruling political parties and medical treatments in Western Africa.
In the context of a medical emergency caused by an unknown infectious disease, such as Ebola, my findings suggested that music artists may be better positioned to communicate with civil society than institutional actors because they are trusted by the public and can convey complex biomedical information in compelling stories. The source credibility model gives a theoretical framework for explaining this, arguing that although the trustworthiness of the information source has little effect on knowledge acquisition or retention, it has a large impact on attitude change (Hovland & Weiss, 1951). For example, evidence of the effectiveness of spokespersons in public service announcements suggests that people pay less attention to messages when delivered by international celebrities because they lack a direct connection to the crisis or are doing it for their own image; however, people pay more attention and are motivated to change their opinion when a local person delivers the message because of a sense of belonging to the same place and identifying with them.
The inclusion of local artists in the songs, as well as the contest’s public broadcast on radio, television, and online, increased the impression of local ownership of the message and allowed for emotional participation. In Africa, where there is a lack of professional journalism and media constraints imposed by governments or private commercial interests, music is a tool for youth emancipation that reflects the everyday experiences of people on the margins; lyrics frequently represent ordinary people’s everyday concerns (Mano, 2007).
The original ASE song was created in the style of reggae, a music genre with a history of social engagement as a pan-African music genre connected with criticism of racism and imperialism. Reggae is a form of self-expression and resistance that challenges the current quo and allows African youth, disenfranchised by inadequate work possibilities and political oppression, to oppose mainstream narratives and call out abuses of power by local and global elites (Reed, 2012). Thus, even if the song’s words addressed trust and optimism, reggae emphasized that the crisis was linked to global political power inequalities. In this way, communal song production enables communities to analyze a social phenomena, generate and share joint knowledge, and appeal to young people and collectivist cultures that see music as an endogenous form of cultural expression.
Music during COVID-19
As I write the last pages of this chapter, the globe is experiencing a COVID-19 pandemic-related disaster. Music, from artists serenading neighbors on Italian balconies to songs about hand washing, played a vital part in spreading knowledge, optimism, and stress reduction throughout the early months of 2020. Musicians used songs, performances, and actions to mobilize their audience to campaign for public health. One of the songs created during the early phases of the epidemic exemplifies how music may be a valuable instrument in young participation in COVID-19 prevention. Vietnam is recognized for responding quickly to early signs of the epidemic in Wuhan, China, by establishing social distancing restrictions, border closures, and contact tracking measures. Having previously experienced infectious disease outbreaks and understanding the possible impacts of an uncontrolled pandemic on the health-care system, the government chose a preventative approach that helped to limit instances (Jones, 2020).
During the COVID-19 epidemic, Ghen Cô Vy| NIOEH x K.HƯNG x MIN x ERIK (2020) partnered with the Ministry of Health and Vietnam’s National Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health to post a song on YouTube on handwashing. At the time of writing, this song has been seen over 53 million times. Its lyrics encourage listeners to be vigilant, avoid touching their faces, and keep a social distance. The video gained popularity on social media, and one user made a choreographed video on TikTok—an increasingly popular social media outlet for user-generated videos—inspiring many others to mimic it. Quang Dang, a young Vietnamese choreographer, posted a TikTok video with handwashing moves coordinated with the music with the hashtags #vudieuruatay #handwashingmove (Đang, 2020). Using the song as a time cue for length and coordination, the choreography demonstrates the proper steps to wash hands, assists users in remembering the steps to wash hands thoroughly, and provides persuasion through peer-to-peer influence in the form of millions of users who responded to the online challenge, copied the choreography, and posted it online.
Another example of social mobilization via music was the activity of musicians who banded together to collect funds for the World Health Organization (WHO) to promote COVID-19 prevention. In April 2020, American musician Lady Gaga organized “One World Together at Home,” a virtual concert featuring an all-star lineup of famous music artists who performed and invited spectators to remain at home and contribute to the World Health Organization. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, has welcomed the concert. It gave a forum for musicians to play at a time when all live music events had been canceled, as well as to demonstrate their support for WHO and COVID-19 prevention efforts.
During the exhibition, artists encouraged a favorable attitude toward the WHO, despite the fact that the official US narrative blamed the WHO in part for the tardy reaction to COVID 19. Celebrity engagement prompted the public to make contributions, confirming that the people agreed with the message. In these two COVID-19 cases, song and celebrity capital facilitated public involvement via user-generated films while also giving monies to a worldwide organization working on COVID-19 relief, demonstrating that popular music can be an effective social mobilization instrument.
Lessons Learned and Best Practice
Through the Africa Stop Ebola initiative in Guinea, we created an entertainment-education campaign based on song to involve locals in developing and spreading health information in a way that was relevant to their needs. During this process, the basic concept of presenting a “health education” message in a song evolved into a message encouraging listeners to trust the response and have optimism that the pandemic might be ended. The artists were more confident in delivering messages of wisdom and hope than in repeating the normative messages about disease prevention disseminated by regional health actors (avoiding touching and social distancing); the project addressed the collective emotional toll of the health crisis and incorporated the artists’ own perspectives. This demonstrates an important lesson: local artists are best equipped to generate work that connects with their communities. Following the premise of combining entertainment-education to reach the poorest and most disadvantaged groups, we created a hit song mixing Reggae and local Hip Hop styles.
We learnt to emphasize media that is accessible to those living in rural and distant locations, who are often isolated and overlooked in the communication process due to their culture, language, or community size. This featured a free digital music video on YouTube as well as marketing on local radio. The use of radio helps to reach communities with various languages since radio stations allow many indigenous and rural people living in severe poverty to receive information and communication in their native languages via inexpensive battery-powered radios. Radio is a dependable way to reach disenfranchised rural communities that do not have access to broadcast TV, digital media, or written communication.
Monitoring and evaluating music-based EE therapies while they are taking place is one of the most difficult issues. Because financing for EE interventions is contingent on the capacity to generate evidence of success, developing a monitoring and evaluation procedure in advance was crucial to ensuring that we could gather data to assess possible effects. To assess the intervention, I gathered media indicators such as the number of views of the online music video, the quantity and kind of user comments, and the song’s coverage in Guinea’s international and local press. I conducted surveys to see how the public perceives the usefulness of songs and music artists in communicating about Ebola. The findings revealed that music artists were seen as credible providers of health information, and songs were regarded as an efficient means of communicating with young people.
I also interviewed health professionals and MSF health promotion managers, who said they appreciated the intervention because it offered a fresh way to communicate and engage people in the midst of public weariness with Ebola messaging. Another crucial lesson learned: during a health crisis, the communication environment may become saturated with repeated messages demanding behavior change from people without regard for the emotional effect. Repetition causes public tiredness, which may have a detrimental influence on disease control efforts. In this way, what began as a health communication campaign evolved into an emotional communication tool designed by artists to foster trust and optimism in the face of widespread public distrust of state and international development players.
The success of this method extends beyond the social marketing value of songs as communication vehicles, as music allows for the construction of culture-centered narratives that may engage the audience in debate and critical thinking. Thus, music in entertainment-education serves as a platform for bottom-up community participation in acts addressing social change and health message via participatory communication.
