Heartstrings & Heartbeats: Music to trigger debate on Mental Health
‘ Heartstrings and Heartbeats’ is a unique project that seeks to explore mental health issues among creative people.
The Great Musical Icon – the Jamaican legendary Reggae Ambassador, Bob Marley ( Berhaine Selassie) says that one good thing about music is that “when it hits you, you feel no pain’!
And in that spirit this project – which is collaboration between University of Botswana Faculty of Medicine and a private company called, Infers Group, hopes to achieve the same goals and more. Infers Group is a knowledge management company that prides itself in using public, private and civic partnerships to “catalyse inclusive growth, rapid diversification and export orientation towards achieving African human resource based economies”. Heartstrings & Heartbeats was launched to the public on Friday at the University of Botswana by the Dean of the Faulty of Medicine, Prof. Oatlhokwa Nkomazana; Psychiatry Professor, Otienno joined by Infers Founder and Chief Executive Abraham Mamela and the Director of Dialogue Group, Tonderai Tsara.
Tsara described Heartstrings and Heartbeats as a global public engagement project that seeks to create knowledge exchange between
scientists in Denmark and Botswana including collaboration on projects emerging from explorations of mental health issues affecting creative people. It is a three year project. In the second year it will bring together stakeholders to co- create solutions that utilise action research to explore mental health among creative people.
During the conference two musical items that fuse Botswana’s 4- string Guitar represented by the renowned folk artist, Solly Sebotso with Danish Electronic Dance Music - premiered. The two tracks are ‘ Troubled’, by Solly Sebotso and featuring J. Spliff and Mpho Sebina.
The other track is ‘ Hard Times’ also by Solly Sebotso featuring J. Spliff and Zuziwe Mavuma.
Speaking to issues of intellectual property in co- created works and how benefits will be shared among the three Batswana creatives and the Danish partner, Mamela assured that all the artists involved will benefit according to an agreed formula, similar to the one used by COSBOTS. Nkomazana expressed hope that combining global cultural intellectual property and scientific knowledge will eventually lead to solutions that can inform policy and initiate knowledge economy projects that can be exported. Speaking at the occasion the artists – Solly, Mpho and Zuziwe – expressed great delight at being part of the project. In fact both Mpho and Zuziwe shared that it has helped them to deal with anxiety issues that they have been battling.