ABSTRACT
HIV/AIDS, like other epidemics such as malaria and sleeping sickness, has forced populations to situate themselves within a global system of relationships, knowledge, and health discourse. Music in many ways allows individuals and communities to address the intersection of these local and international discourses on HIV/AIDS. The vast literature on HIV/AIDS in Africa that has emerged since the late 1990s lays a thorough groundwork for understanding the different ways HIV entered into musical discourses of diverse geographic areas of Africa. Historically rooted within song and other performance texts, specific terms related to HIV and AIDS have emerged and are maintained in contemporary local performances, especially in a country such as Uganda in which the history of the disease is deep. Organizations such as THETA have successfully augmented the efforts of traditional healers in regard to HIV/ AIDS education, counseling, and care.
