Music and Health in Kenya: Sound, Spirituality and Altered Consciousness Juxtaposed with Emotions Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Doktor der Philosophie genehmigt durch die Fakultät für Geistes-, Sozial- und Erziehungswissenschaften der Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg von M.Mus. Muriithi Kigunda geb. am 15. Juni 1975 in Meru - Kenya Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Tomi Mäkelä Gutachterin: Prof. Dr. Flora Veit-Wild Eingereicht am: 26. Februar 2007 Verteidigung der Dissertation am: 02. Juli 2007 Acknowledgements I am humbled to note that my task was essentially to agglomerate ideas that people shared with me. I want to begin by mentioning names of individuals and institutions whose contributions were remarkable. First I convey my deep gratitude to my supervisors for tirelessly working with me throughout the research period. Musicologist Prof. Dr. Tomi Mäkelä and music therapy specialist Dr. Thomas Wosch (University of Applied Sciences Magdeburg-Stendal) guided me in dealing with a broad interdisciplinary area covering a range of musical, healing, and therapy concerns. This work is essentially a result of an informal collaboration between these two scholars and their institutions. Prof. Mäkelä shared insightful musicological ideas ensuring also that the work had a sound scientific basis, while to Dr. Wosch my astuteness in concerns relating to music therapy owed much. As a non specialist in the area of music therapy, and because connections between music therapy and healing practices in Kenya were of interest to me, Dr. Wosch’s expertise was crucial. I wish to thank them, further, for being a source of encouragement and helpful advice on occasions when personal and family challenges were so strong that I could possibly have given up. I thank the authorities at the University of Applied Sciences Magdeburg-Stendal, Fachbereich Sozial- und Gesundheitswesen, for receiving me as a guest student and working in concert with Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg in order to provide me with necessary library and other resources. I am indebted to Katholischer Akademischer Ausländer Dienst (KAAD) for providing funds, without which this work could not have been realizable. KAAD had earlier also partially funded my Masters Degree studies at Kenyatta University, Nairobi. This work is in some respects an expansion of the research carried out at that time. Further, many thanks go to Prof. Dr. Jean N. Kidula (University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA), who proofread and edited the language besides making important suggestions for improvement as an ethnomusicologist and specialist in Kenyan music. Moreover, Prof. Kidula was a great source of inspiration when she taught me at Kenyatta University, and it is through her stimulation that my idea of carrying out research in music and health in Kenya was first conceived. I wish to thank Prof. Dr. Carolyn B. Kenny (Antioch University, USA) and Prof. Dr. Brynjulf Stige (University of Bergen, Norway) for their book and CD ROM donations for my prior study and research at Kenyatta University, owed to their profound interest in a worldwide debate in theory and practice of music therapy. The texts introduced me to ideas about Western music therapy to which I consider this study pretty well affiliated. This perhaps would be seen by many not as a music therapy text, but I believe it provides a constructive touchstone for music therapy’s institutionalization and growth in Kenya. ii I thank Prof. Dr. med. Jörg Frommer (professor for psychosomatic medicine, Otto-von- Guericke-Universität Magdeburg) for briefly sharing his view of health and healing. This was my first text touching on health and healing concepts, which is why I felt obliged to consider positions such as those of experts in his area of specialization. My other thanks go to Dr.des. Tobias Robert Klein, a colleague and good friend. A warm-hearted Klein assisted me to settle down in the early days of my stay in Magdeburg. He also acquired for me a number of valuable texts from Berlin and West Africa where he conducted his research. I am deeply grateful to all my interviewees – CCR ministers (Muchiri, Philip, Catherine, John, Cecilia, Bahati, and Cosmas) and participants, waganga and ngui from Kitui (Ndaa, Mina, Mbwika, Katulu, Munalo and others), and street musicians (Shombe, Christina, Raymond, Owuor, Gatune and others) – for gladly sharing their experiences with me. Further, my gratitude extends to those people who helped me to establish contacts. They include Gerald Atheru who introduced me to Archangel Raphael Catholic Healing Ministry. Peter Gatobu and John Wambua guided me in the search for waganga and ngui from Mulundi. Wambua further did song text and dialogue translations. Robinson Musembi, who criticized much of what I earlier wrote in an article mentioning kilumi, not only shared with me what he had witnessed regularly in kilumi from his Kisasi home, but, being unavailable, introduced me to his relatives and friends who helped me to find waganga and ngui from that locality. Musembi’s Kisasi friends further translated dialogues and song texts from Kamba language. I wish to thank Njeri my wife. On my return to Germany after carrying out fieldwork in Kenya, she contacted some interviewees on my behalf regarding issues that needed further illumination. She also obtained some of the cited statistical data from Kenyan government offices, and inquired about song composers – of the music sampled after I left Kenya upon actualization of field research – from music stores and elsewhere. Besides acting as though she were a research partner, she dependably took care of our daughter Wanja, and both were perilously deprived of a husband and a father for a protracted period of indeed several years. Lastly, and most important, I am grateful to God almighty for the fortitude to complete this research in rather difficult conditions. It certainly was hapless and ironical that I wrote parts of this text when I felt emotionally unwell due to pernicious predicaments that recurrently prevailed over my study period, barred only by God’s grace from defeating my passion to succeed. iii “…the effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence” Arthur Schopenhauer iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 METHODOLOGY............................................................................................................. 14 1.1.0 PHENOMENOLOGICAL DESIGN .......................................................................................... 17 1.1.1 THE ROLE OF RESEARCHER .............................................................................................. 23 1.1.2 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES..................................................................................... 26 1.1.2a Sampling......................................................................................................................... 26 1.1.2b Research Instruments ..................................................................................................... 31 1.1.2c Fieldwork Procedures..................................................................................................... 34 1.1.3 DATA ANALYSIS PROCEDURES ......................................................................................... 37 1.1.3a Reduction ....................................................................................................................... 37 1.1.3b Triangulation.................................................................................................................. 39 1.1.3c Problem, Procedure, Product (PPP) Guide..................................................................... 41 1.1.4 STUDY OUTCOMES ............................................................................................................ 42 MUSIC AND TRADITIONAL HEALING OF AKAMBA..................................................... 44 2.1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 44 2.2 OBSERVATIONS .................................................................................................................... 47 2.2.1 Photographs....................................................................................................................... 58 2.3 KAMBA HEALING MUSIC ..................................................................................................... 62 2.3.1 General Features ............................................................................................................... 62 2.3.2 Song Texts and their Meanings......................................................................................... 67 2.4 DATA ANALYSIS .................................................................................................................. 71 2.4.1 Disease in Kamba Culture................................................................................................. 71 2.4.2 Dealing with Disease ........................................................................................................ 78 2.4.2a The Role of a Healer – Mganga ..................................................................................... 78 2.4.2b The Role of a Healer’s Healer – Ngui...........................................................................