BlogJAM: Abia narratives of hope through trauma aesthetics

Our project, Performing Pain: Mnemotechnologies of remembrance in Abia and its impact on informal (music) education, memory, peace and recovery, investigates the impact of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) massacre in Abia in the Lango sub-region of Uganda on the 4th of February 2004, through the aesthetic afterlife of the tragedy and the vehicles of music and dance.

We argue that the personal narratives in music and dance contain a wealth of history about the war.  Abia is the dance capital of Lango and the attack on Abia was also an attack on the most celebrated artistic community of language.  Our project seeks to establish how the deep scars of war embedded in the individual and collective psyche of the community and the visible traumas in their bodies can be transfigured into narratives of hope through trauma aesthetics.