Popular Music as Public Health Technology: Music for Global Human Development and “Giving Voice to Health” in Liberia

Abstract: This article presents an applied ethnomusicological approach to public health promotion, showing how mediated popular music can support better sanitation behavior, by outlining a pilot project conducted in post-conflict Liberia. This approach centers on a method for effective, sustainable, empowering, and ethical collaboration and a theory for positive behavioral change. The method is Participatory Action Research (PAR), a powerful model for applied, collaborative ethnomusicology. The PAR model radically revises the relationship between “researcher” and “researched,” combining committed, egalitarian participation, transformative action, and applied research aimed at positive, sustainable social change, in a continuous spiral of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting. The theory is the social psychological notion of “reasoned action” (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975), as applied to public health by Hubley (1984; 1988; 1993) to underscore the combined roles of beliefs, values, and subject norms to influence behavioral intentions toward health. I augment this theory, highlighting music’s affective potential for shaping belief, value, and subject norms. Taken together, theory and method support what I call “human development,” defined as progress toward collaboratively-set humanly-oriented objectives, via grassroots, egalitarian, empowering collaborations. The pilot project is enacted by a far-flung PAR network, including nationals of Liberia, the USA, and Canada, connecting creative music/video production, ethnomusicology, public health, and development. Project outputs include a music video and a documentary video, linked through common sounds, images, and purpose. Each is “double-sided,” seeking to change behavior in both the developing and developed worlds. The article assesses project limitations and charts strategies to address them in the future.