2014
“Ebola in Town,” a hot new dance track popular in West Africa, is more than a catchy tune—it’s also serving as a public service announcement as countries like Liberia and Guinea face a severe outbreak of the deadly disease. The song, recorded by rap artists D-12, Shadow, and Kuzzy, also promotes a dance involving no bodily contact between revelers—a novelty meant to highlight the ease with which the Ebola virus can be spread. The Telegraph reports on why this particular outbreak and this particular form of media have become so important:
In countries like Liberia and Guinea, where adult literacy is below 40 per cent, music, theatre and radio are regularly used to try to spread health messages as widely as possible, although the artists are not thought to have written the song for any aid agency or health charity. According to the World Health Organization and the country’s presidency, 258 clinical cases of suspected or confirmed Ebola have been recorded in Guinea since the outbreak was first identified in March. Of those, 174 people have died. Another nine people are believed to have died in Liberia and five in Sierra Leone.
c.
1858
Absent any strict laws governing the health and cleanliness of food products, nineteenth-century Americans were often susceptible to illness at the hands of tainted meat and milk. The Swill Milk scandal, which swept New York in the late 1850s, involved infection-ridden dairy products that were often sold to lower-income citizens, sometimes resulting in death. To get the word out to a population whose literacy rates were extremely low, reformers turned to music, using songs like “Swill Milk No. 2” to spread the word.
Oft times when alone I am thinking. Of the news in the papers I’ve read, About the poisonous milk we are drinking, Drained from a cow that’s half dead. It’s enough to make all of us shudder, When in our own minds we do think, About the poor child that is murdered, By swallowing this poisonous drink. Although infants are small and unable, To tell what they feel or they thing, But what ever you set on the table, Do see it’s not swill that you drink.