Music – Ethnography.com

Rumba is good, even through war, through Ebola

Posted on September 15, 2019April 3, 2022 by Christina Lauren Quigley

Since returning to Kigoma, Tanzania on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in central Africa for my Fulbright research, I have been looking for two of my Congolese friends. I was told that they crossed the Lake, and returned to two of the cities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to live– to be together with their family and relatives.

People should not be reduced only to suffering, and narratives only to exodus, which I recognized in my anthropology classes at California State University, Chico. …

Is Drumming Better than Prozac? An Anthropological Reflection

Posted on February 21, 2019April 3, 2022 by Christina Lauren Quigley

‘Mental health’ has been shown to be social and environmental, though we’ve heard of Prozac, and even music therapy led by professionals. Well-being may also be connected to collective, organized sound among ordinary people. I’d like to share a recent study in biomedicine, and draw these scientific conclusions into the anthropological realm. First, because I’d like to bring biomedicine into anthropological discussions, so that the medical system fathered by Hippocrates can meet other medical systems, particularly those of the immense continent of Africa.…

The Place That Is Our Home

Posted on January 13, 2019April 3, 2022 by Christina Lauren Quigley

In 1978, Remmy Ongala left his home in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (not far from the city of Bukavu) for Tanzania. He boarded a boat across Lake Tanganyika to Kigoma, Tanzania’s main port city on the great lake. From Kigoma, he then traveled by train to Dar es Salaam to eventually become one of the most famous and well-loved ‘Tanzanian’ songwriter-musicians, Dr. Remmy.

For me, that small city of Kigoma that Dr.…