West African Women: Performing as Agents of Change in War and Pandemic

Year 2021, Volume: 4 - Ethnomusicology journal Special Issue / Women Play Sing the Earth-Music and Women, 9 - 20, 30.12.2021

Ruth Stone

Abstract

For the last forty years, communities of women performers in Liberia and the United States have endured both an extended civil war and the Ebola pandemic. Drawing on those difficult events, I consider the ways in which these women have made music key to living through the situation in strength and to creating change. I bring themes that have emerged in the war and pandemic periods of Liberia into juxtaposition.

· Liberian women have sung, danced, and performed to center themselves and their audiences during both pandemic and war.

· Performance has informed and educated people during crises.

· Music has become a medium for truth telling when speech was not possible.

· Music making has been deployed as a critical tool of persuasion.

· Music has been engaged to combat post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) that frequently manifests within Liberian communities following war and pandemic.

Of these five themes, the first demonstrates how music simply helps participants return to a state of calm or the status quo. The subsequent themes progress to the fifth and final theme that accomplishes a healing of deep-seated pain produced by war and pandemic. Performance proves to be a potent and powerful force that women deploy deftly and creatively. Music achieves a special purpose as these women move their audiences away from the tortuous pain that the calamities have created and help them to achieve healthier and happier lives.

Keywords

Music and War, Music and Pandemic, Music as persuasion, Liberia, Kpelle people, Diaspoara Community, Refugee camp

References

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