Historically, music has always been associated with harmonizing cross-cultural relations. The concept of diplomacy conjures up international peaceful relations and negotiations. Kings and rulers, in reaching out to neighbors and other countries, first used music, along with dancing, sports and food — utilizing a soft touch — to make peace. From a lifetime of practicing music diplomacy, I urge that music be highlighted as a powerful means of promulgating peace and goodwill.
Music has long been recognized as The Universal Language. Even for those who don’t understand the words, the perception of feeling, emotion, and meaning are undeniable. An example is the playing of national anthems at international sporting events. The positive karma comes shining through.
Diplomacy is necessary to promote goodwill at communal and personal levels, including friendship, marriage, and neighborliness, calling for an ongoing genuine give-and-take. Music can be utilized to foster such goodwill through a combination of education, entertainment and camaraderie.
During my three-year stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi, Africa, 1967-69, I personally discovered the impact of teaching a myriad of basic health education issues throughout the country. It all began when I observed that flies were wont to collect on the eyes of babies who were being carried on their mothers’ backs after having had their diaper changed and fed mama’s milk. The mothers weren’t aware of the danger of the flies.
Another volunteer who lived seven miles away drew a large fly on poster boards, and I printed in Chichewa, the national language, “Brush the Flies Out of Your Babies’ Eyes to Prevent Pink Eye.” These posters were hung in our respective under-fives baby clinic. Soon thereafter I put those words into music and recorded, with the most popular band in the country, the first song I’d ever written.
Once the song was released on Malawi Broadcasting Corporation, the only radio station in Malawi at that time, it became a national hit. Health care professionals, Peace Corps Volunteers, and parents then started to spread the word, resulting in fewer babies and other village members reporting a decrease in the incidence of conjunctivitis nationally.
Something more profound occurred next: My second song, UFA wa MTEDZA, asked mothers to put pounded up peanut flour in their babies’ maize porridge and feed it to them three times a day if they wanted their babies to be healthy (to weigh a lot on the scale). This song became the number one song in Malawi for three years running and was credited for saving countless Malawian babies from dying of malnutrition.
Additionally, the money from the sale of my music was put into a special Peace Corps fund that allowed me to bring a young Malawian home with me and send him to Warren Wilson College, one of seven workstudy colleges in the USA, which I had attended when it was a junior college.
The above are indeed examples of cross-cultural diplomacy of incorporating public health messages in the form of local songs and jingles. Of the 17 recordings I did in Malawi, two others had measurable impact. The song I wrote and recorded for rabies control was played incessantly on MBC and was credited with getting that dreaded disease contained throughout Malawi. The other was a 20-second jingle exhorting the value of fertilizer to increase crop yield and therefore profit. It, too, was played continuously. Sales of fertilizer boomed.
Since returning home at the end of 1969, I wrote four jingles under the aegis of family planning while I was a medical student at UNC-Chapel Hill. In 1994 I was invited to return to Malawi to help combat the AIDS epidemic there. My album, “Songs About AIDS” (Nyimbo za EDZI), raised over $30,000, which was used to feed Malawian children who had been orphaned because their parents had died of AIDS. Last year, Developing Radio Partners, where I have the good fortune to serve on its Board of Directors, distributed nine 60-second original jingles throughout Malawi. These were cited in helping to quash the national epidemic of cholera.
Music diplomacy is essential at a time like this to be utilized whenever possible to foster peace and crosscultural sharing for the common good.
Jack Allison has been a music diplomat since June 1966 when he appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” with the UNC Men’s Glee Club, followed by a six-week tour of Europe, including then East Germany. Visit doctorjackallison. com.
