Jim Logan raises health awareness in Uganda

BOSTON — When jazz guitarist and Berklee College of Music alumnus Jim Logan lived in Uganda in 2004, he received a grant from the U.S. Embassy to perform with a band of local musicians at a barely sustainable camp for internally displaced peoples (IDPs) in Soroti. His original thought was to bring some musical relief to a plight that UN Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland calls their “largest neglected humanitarian emergency in the world.”

Anticipating a sizable crowd, Logan decided to invite non-governmental healthcare organizations to deliver services from tables around the edges of the audience. Local health workers know that social stigmas prevent many citizens from being tested for AIDS, and the supplies they brought reflected their statistics. Logan thinks it was the music that day that eased people from any stigmas as more than 100 HIV tests were administered, wiping clean the supply on hand, and leaving a demand for many more.

On May 11, he leaves for his first tour to Uganda since 2004 and plans to play in at least four IDP camps, as well as two townships in the northern part of the country. He is also bringing 2,000 HIV testing kits, which were donated by Abbott Pharmaceuticals. 

“In Africa, music is a valuable means of communication that is highly respected,” said Logan.

Logan formed the Cambridge based organization, CARAVAAN (Cultivating Art and Realizing Alternative Ventures for Aid to the African Nation), to support further exhibitions combining music and health service delivery in Uganda. The mission is to use live music as a means of delivering health services to disenfranchised Ugandans. This includes HIV testing and counseling and other health initiatives. 

CARAVAAN also has a scholarship fund for exceptional African artists to attend colleges in the U.S. He hopes to return to the U.S. with a young piano player he met while living in Uganda who has been accepted to Berklee College, but who faces obstacles due to the lack of funding for full tuition.

The potential recipient is a Ugandan piano player named Godfrey, who played with Logan for more than two years in Uganda. Logan submitted Godfrey’s portfolio to Berklee, which offered the pianist a $50,000 tuition scholarship to be distributed over four years.

Logan is trying to find more support to help Godfrey attend college in Boston, a proposal made even more compelling as the Ugandan is currently raising his own three children, as well as the three children of his brother.

“AIDS is everywhere in Africa,” said Logan. “Godfrey’s brother was a well known and respected musician who died of AIDS.”

Traveling with Logan to Uganda in May will be Berklee assistant professor Herman Hampton, a bass player and Roxbury resident and Stefanie Pollender, formerly with the British Quaker Organization in Northern Uganda.

The Berklee College of Music Alumni Grants Association, Christian Aid and Save the Children Uganda are funding Logan’s tour. Doing tour preparation in Uganda is the Concerned Parents Association, an organization of parents whose children have been abducted and forced to be child soldiers.

Reminiscing about his last tour of Uganda, Logan said, “It was the most significant musical experience of my life. We made a difference in the lives of many people that day. What started as a desire to perform for people living in unconscionable conditions in the IDP camps, morphed out of a last minute brainstorm into a means of delivering health and social services.” He added, “I feel I owe Berklee for many things; the education gained there has certainly attributed to my capacity to take this on, and now for the opportunity to repeat this initiative on a larger scale.”