Music and Healing During Post-Election Violence in Kenya
Abstract
The significance of music as a healing agent permeates across the cultural spectrum. Hitherto, we find people of many cultures incorporating music to transform those unhealthy individuals into healthy ones. This paper extrapolates from the events that led to Kenya’s post-election violence of 2007 and enumerates how a Kenyan community musician embraced the therapeutic qualities inherent in the cultural music of the Kenyan people to help the violence victims who developed post-traumatic stress disorder following the disputed elections. The story adds nuance to our understanding of how community musicians are still an invaluable therapeutic resource albeit their lack of professional training.
Introduction
Throughout the world, traditional and modern non-western music healers, trained music therapists, and physicians have used music to heal people - especially during political turmoil and bloodshed that erupted in many parts of the world, leading to death and destruction. Throughout this article, I examine a scenario of using music for healing in Kenya's post-election violence of 2007 and how ordinary world musicians embrace the ineffaceable therapeutic qualities inherent in music. I also look more closely at how trained music therapists use music to heal those diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. A main bulk of the paper focuses upon the story of how Kenya Air Force Senior Private Doris Chepchumba Tanui has been able to put her music to use in a way that has not been used in post-independent Kenya previously.
A point of contention in this paper is the inspiration by which the ordinary musicians in Kenya, even though lacking professional therapy training, are not only able, but compelled by tradition, lore, and faith, to use music for healing the people affected by human discord. The mental health of war victims has long been considered one of the classic themes of transcultural psychiatry (Hart et al., 2008). The importance of music as a healer has been connected to the encounter between cultures and to the meaning, diagnosis, and interpretation of trauma among cultures. For example, in the Kenyan tribe of the Taita, trauma of any kind, whether war related or otherwise, would be viewed as being caused by a malevolent spirit, thereby requiring certain kinds of music to appease the gods (Akombo, 2006). Moreover, the mental health of refugees from civil war is particularly important because it encompasses their psychological distress connected to the initial experience of violence and the subsequent trauma connected to this displacement. In effect, they are robbed of their freedom (Hasanovic, Sinanovic, Selimbasic, Pajevic, & Avdibegovic, 2006)
Kenya's Post-election Violence at a Glance
Kenya conducted nationwide elections in December 2007. There was widespread unrest and violence that followed the announcement of the presidential results. President Mwai Kibaki was sworn in after a vote that opponents disputed as rigged. In the weeks that ensued, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced, while hundreds were either maimed or killed in the mayhem. Tribal resentments that had long festered in Kenya bubbled over. President Kibaki's Kikuyu people, Kenya's largest ethnic group, were accused of turning to what the other tribes considered "Kikuyu dominance of politics and business" to the detriment of the minority tribes. The international community and organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) contributed to the treatment of the wounded, and also assisted displaced people in Kenya. Additional clinics were opened in the camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) to treat both tuberculosis and HIV victims of the violence. A surgical team also attended to people with machete wounds and other injuries while other team members offered basic medical care, handing out basic shelter supplies such as water.
Of the wars that have occurred in post-colonial Kenya, the 2007 post-election war has received the greatest attention in the West, especially in the United States and Europe, as well as in other member states of The Group of Eight Industrialized Nations, such as China and Japan. This is partly because of these highly industrialized nations' involvement in Kenya's economic development through financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monterey Fund (IMF), and partly because of the role Kenya plays in the Great Lakes region and the horn of Africa.
The Relationship between War and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) may be conceptualized as part of a dissociative spectrum in which recalling/re-experiencing the trauma - flashbacks - alternates with numbing, or, detachment and avoidance (Turkus, 1992; Briere, Evan, Runtz, & Wall, 1988). Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder can be an extremely debilitating condition that can occur after exposure to a terrifying event in which grave physical harm occurred or was a threat. Traumatic events that can trigger PTSD include violent armed conflict like that experienced in Africa during the recent post-election violence in Kenya, or the civil wars in Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, and Sudan, to name a few. Other situations may include personal assaults such as mugging, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat. Those who may suffer include the veterans serving in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Sudan; rescue workers involved in the aftermath of earthquake disasters; survivors of accidents, rape, physical and sexual abuse, and other crimes; immigrants fleeing from Kenya's violence; and survivors of the 1998 Nairobi US Embassy Bombing, among others.
Effective treatments have now been developed to help people with PTSD. Research is also helping more scientists better understand the condition and how it affects both the brain and body. Different forms of music, such as drumming, are becoming an important therapeutic tool. Drumming exercises greatly reduce stress among Vietnam veterans and other victims of trauma. Apparently, the altering of brain-wave patterns is one level of explanation for this change (Harris, 2007).
Transforming Folk Music into a Modern Healing Tool
During Kenya's post-election violence, in addition to all the help that came from the international medical response community, Kenya Air Force Senior Private Doris Chepchumba Tanui is highly credited for putting her music to use in a way that had not been used in post-independent Kenya. Ms. Tanui starts off by containing her own trauma from the violence that left many families displaced, maimed or killed. It can be hypothesized here that perhaps Ms. Tanui used her own music as a therapeutic measure owing to her cultural conviction and practice to heal her own traumatic experiences. Her singing may not only be responsible for healing herself, but also those afflicted by the traumatic experiences, such as those IDPs at the camps. In retrospect, the IDPs can also be considered amateurs who benefited from their own participatory singing. These exercises seem to confound the idea that singing really does promote the well-being of people from all cultures. It is almost a given dogma that permeates generations and defies new philosophies.
In their research where they attempted to the answer the question: "Does Singing Promote Well-Being?," Grape et al., (2004) carried out an empirical study of professional and amateur singers during a singing lesson. This study explored the possible beneficial effects of singing on an individual's well-being during a singing lesson. Eight amateur (two male, six female, 28-53 years) and eight professional (four male, four female, 26-49 years) singers who had been attending singing lessons for at least six months were included. The singers scored five visual analogue scales (VAS: sad-joyful, anxious-calm, worried-elated, listless-energetic, and tense-relaxed) before and after the lesson. In addition, researchers performed a semi-structured interview. Heart-rate variability analyses showed significant changes over time in the two groups for total power and low and high frequency power. Power increased during singing in professionals, whereas there were no changes in amateurs. This indicates an ability to retain more cardio-physiological fitness for singing in professional singers compared to amateur singers.
Humor for Health through Music
Doris Tanui applies humor to her music, which she heavily borrows from Kenya's artists, including the late Daudi Kabaka (1939-2001), a legend of Kenya's popular music. It was interesting to see how the audience reacted to her rhetorical questions in her songs such as:
Why didn't God create the Luo with horns, Kikuyus with tails, Kalenjin with wings... all communities with distinct identities... if we are not equal,' she ponders in a song castigating the post-elections violenceÂ… why people were burning food stores, schools, houses, forests, hospitals and even vehicles, when the items are all for the human welfare and now without them, what next? (Doris Tanui in 2008, quoted in Ogosia, 2008)
Therapists have used humor to reduce anxiety that may be a result of PTSD (Schacht & Stewart, 1990). Sigmund Freud, one of the trailblazers of modern-day psychology, said of humor, "By its repudiation of the possibility of suffering, it takes its place in the great series of methods devised by the mind of man for evading the compulsion to suffer" (Freud, 1983, p. 217). In treating traumatized patients, Haddock (2001) suggests that "modeling humor is an effective way of teaching emotional management and self-nurturing." (p. 257). According to Ross (2000), humor helps form a treatment alliance, disrupts negative transference, has an antidepressant effect and may even benefit the immune system (p. 340).
Conclusion
This paper shows the magnitude with which musicians in Africa consider music as medicine. It also shows that human discord that precipitates into human suffering can also be addressed using a human phenomenon such as music. Since music has been used in Africa for millennia to treat ailments, this does not come as 21st-century surprise through the contribution of Doris Tanui of Kenya. Her initiative could be considered a renewal of the olden practice being re-initiated with a new musical and rhythmic and sonic energy in new times. The utilization of music as medicine may be at an optimal stage in the contemporary healthcare arena in Kenya and in Africa due to the inaccessibility of Medicare to the masses. However, its usage negates the antagonistic relationship between the pure and scientific quantitative paradigm and the anecdotal. Through apprenticeship, modern African musicians have acquired a status similar to the traditional healer status and seem to consider some form of epidemiologic information or data available to them through oral tradition, and hence can diagnose victims of war. It appears as though, by observing the victimsÂ’ psycho-social traits associated with post-traumatic syndrome, the music healers correlate these by the wounds or broken limbs they see prior in their diagnostic endeavors to prescribe certain kinds of music. In this case, Ms. Tanui authoritatively prescribed popular music.
While recounting her experiences with the post-election violence, one patient recounted how horrified she became by the gruesome and spine-chilling burning of children, women and men alive in her home province of the Rift Valley, where a Catholic priest was also stoned to death for belonging to a different tribe. If this victim had been timely reminded by other musicians in the village that music could influence their traumatic states and general autonomic imbalance, perhaps it would have been worth the effort for everyone to sing, drum, and dance. As for the extension and advocacy for music and healing, Ms. Tanui suggested that there was need for Kenya's Ministry of Education to use music as communication medium for lessons in character education and nationalism (Ogosia, 2008). Through her music, Ms. Tanui's conviction in fact goes beyond the vortex of music’s healing power, and delves into the long-standing tradition of African quasi-spiritual egalitarianism. In order to leave a lasting impact on the community, Ms. Tanui started what she called "a military intervention without spilling blood." She reminded Kenyans that God created human beings in his own image, without prejudice or features given to animals like horns, tails, wings, and anything else that could make one community or race think they are special – all being conveyed through the medium of music with a single objective—to heal.
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