| dc.description.abstract | This study examined the role of music and song as communication tools in Kenya's electoral campaigns. The study takes music as a form of communication, to the voters, and therefore sought to establish the role it plays in influencing voters during election campaigns, its effectiveness as a tool for passing campaign messages, and its usefulness in political campaigns.
The study scrutinized the vanous stages and methods of communication in political campaigns,emphasizing that during such campaigns, the basic idea is to get the message across. It was observed that whereas music has been used in political campaigns in Kenya, no assessment has been done to gauge the effect of such music in making the voter decide to vote for a particular candidate.
Apart from the effect of the music on the voters, the study also sought to establish the opinion of the singers and politicians on the effectiveness of using music and song to pass political campaign messages.
In the Literature Review section, the study looks at music as a genre, proceeding to define music and also looking at the early scholar's views on music, including the Ancient Greek ideas. The section looks at African music, noting that traditionally, music played a very important role in the daily life of the African. Music is thereafter considered as one of the sources of political information in Africa with the study quoting a case study from Nigeria. The review also addresses the use of political and campaign songs in America, noting that in cases, music is not only used in politics, but is also used as politics. The chapter concludes by a review of political music in Kenya in the 1970's and 1980's and ends by reviewing the use of music in the 2002 general elections in Kenya.
To contextualize the use of music within the area of "Communicationstudies, three theories (models) of communication are given and related to the use of music in political
communication. The researcher sees a correlation between use of music in political campaigns and the democratic participant media theory, with emphasis on reaching and dealing with the unsophisticated majority. The agenda setting theory is also highly applicable, where music and song play an agenda setting role when they are used to propagate political candidate's themes and ideas to the target audience.
Chapter three dwells on the research methods adopted, with a detailed description of the research site and the target population. The chapter then gives the sample design and the sampling procedures adopted, indicating that the researcher reached 206 respondents out of a sampling frame of 65,015 in Gatanga constituency. Questionnaires and interviews were the data collection instruments and techniques used. The chapter then gives insights into the constraints and limitations of the study, the main ones being financial constraints on account of having to cover a whole constituency to interview respondents.
Chapter four gives the research findings, and using frequencies and percentages, captures the age profiles of respondents, their level of education, the effect of music on voters and the overall effect of music on the democratic election process. The key finding of the study was that majority of the voters are moderately influenced by music in deciding to vote for candidates. The voters also found music to be a highly useful tool in passing election campaign messages.
The last chapter captures the summary, conclusion and recommendations. The major conclusion of the study, derived from data obtained from voters' responses, was that music has a considerably significant effect on the voter, though by the time the voter decides to vote, he/she may not' give an accurate assessment of what influenced himlher more among the many campaign methods used. The general verdict however, is that music and song have a substantial effect in making voters decide to vote for a certain candidate. The final conclusion therefore is that music is an important tool for passing messages in political campaigns. | en |
