IJIH

IJIH volumes Vol.2

Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage: Key Factors in Implementing the 2003 Convention

Author : Richard Kurin

In 2003, at the biennial General Conference of UNESCO its Member States voted overwhelmingly for the adoption of a new international treaty: the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The Convention aims to ensure the survival and vitality of the world’s living local, national, and regional cultural heritage in the face of increasing globalisation and its perceived homogenising effects on culture (Matsuura2004). Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) - a loose English translation of the Japanese mukei bunkazi, is broadly defined in terms of oral traditions, expressive culture, the social practices, ephemeral aesthetic manifestations, and forms of knowledge carried and transmitted within cultural communities. It includes everything from stories and tales to music and celebration, folk medicine, craftsmanship, the culinary arts and vernacular architecture. National governments adopting it would be legally bound by the Convention to designate and empower organisations to document intangible cultural heritage and create inventories thereof, and also to encourage the presentation, preservation, protection, and transmission of intangible cultural heritage by working closely and cooperatively with the relevant communities.

IJIH volumes Vol.2

Gomek Gomanan: Ritual and Power Among the Tagabawa Bagobos of Davao, Mindanao, The Philippines

Author : Honey Libertine R. Achanzar

In the course of my dealings with the Tagabawa Bagobos in the Davao district of the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, I noted their reference to the word tolus. Oftentimes, it is used to mean power, but occasionally, it referred to a spirit that guides the artisan in his work. The word tolus was briefly mentioned by Fay-Cooper Cole(Wild Tribes of Davao District ) in his 1913 ethnographic work on the Tagabawa Bagobos. In his account of traditional Bagobo metal working, he indicated that the blacksmiths are under the care of the Tolus ka gomanan, a powerful spirit for whom the Gomek-gomanan ritual is conducted, indicating the beginning of the agricultural cycle. This paper therefore aims to uncover indigenous concepts of power reflected both in Bagobo blacksmithing and in the ritual of the Gomek Gomanan ritual.

IJIH volumes Vol.2

Life and Tradition of the Ababda Nomads in the Egyptian Desert, the Junction between Intangible and Tangible Heritage Management

Author : Jolanda E.M.F. Bos-Seldenthuis

In December 2006 a Heritage Centre was opened in the Wadi el Gamal National Park in south-eastern Egypt, following a decade of research and cooperation with the local community of the area. This Centre, called Beyt Ababda or House of the Ababda, displays the cultural heritage of the Ababda nomads living in the Egyptian Eastern Desert (on the west shore of the Red Sea). This centre is one of the first heritage centres in Egypt to start with a holistic approach in mind, trying to reach the inhabitants of the region and the visitors of the national park and informing them on cultural as well as ecological issues. The cultural identity and intangible heritage of the Ababda will be emphasized and the desert experience of the visitor will be presented in a new manner for Egyptian cultural heritage management. In the Wadi Gamal area all initiatives, both ecological and cultural are included in order to present the visitor with a complete view of desert life, hopefully providing the Ababda community with a sustainable income and amplified cultural identity.

IJIH volumes Vol.2

Defining Intangible Cultural Heritage and its Stakeholders: the Case of Japan

Author : Voltaire Garces Cang

Gujo Odori is a Japanese Bon (festival for the dead usually held in midsummer), in this case a dance matsuri(festival) held annually in Gujo Hachiman, Gujo City, in Gifu Prefecture. Landlocked Gifu Prefecture, and even less Gujo City and the administrative district of Gujo Hachiman, are not too prominent in Japan’s consciousness, and are known primarily for the historic villages of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama, UNESCO World Heritage sites, and to some people for the ayu, the sweetfish found abundantly in its many rivers.

IJIH volumes Vol.2

The Problems and Opportunities of Content-based Analysis and Description of Ethnic Music

Author : Dirk Moelants, Olmo Cornelis, Marc Leman, Jos Gansemans, Rita De Caluwe, Guy De Tré, Tom Matthé & Axel Hallez

The Belgian Royal Museum for Central-Africa (RMCA) holds a large collection of ethnographic artifacts, including a sound archive with music recordings from the early 20th Century up to recently. The archive is one of the biggest and best-documented archives worldwide for the region of Central Africa. An on-going digitisation project is part of a strategy to conserve this archive and make it accessible to the public by (i) the digitisation of the data, and (ii) the application of music information retrieval techniques for the digitised data. While state-of-the-art research in music information retrieval aims to search and retrieve music on the basis of content description, most of the existing tools are designed for Western music collections, without any guarantee that these techniques can be applied to music from other cultures. African music, in particular, creates new challenges for content-based description and information retrieval. This paper describes some general problems regarding the content-based description of African and other non-Western music. It suggests an approach for describing pitch structures which will allow for the description of both Western music and non-Western music.

IJIH volumes Vol.2

Whalers' Shanties of Barouallie, St. Vincent: Observations on the Nature, Decline and Revival of a Unique Caribbean Maritime Tradition

Author : Daniel Lanier & Vincent Reid

Barrouallie, a fishing community on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, has a unique cultural heritage associated with its history as a whaling centre. As a way to alert townspeople of a successful catch, Barrouallie whalers sang occupational songs known as ‘shanties’ while rowing their whaleboats to shore. A product of diverse cultural influences, the shanties of Barrouallie may be viewed as a sub-genre, distinct from the more general body of sea chanteys, the work songs of international 19th century merchant seamen. As a mode of expression - not merely a work song -a shanty could function variously as entertainment, satire, and advertisement. While economic and cultural changes in this developing island nation did not favour the continuance of shanty singing, a revival of interest in Barrouallie’s whaling traditions began in 2001, with particular attention to shanties and the generation of men who recall the role and significance of these songs in the local whaling enterprise.
This 21st century renaissance of a maritime music tradition among living practitioners represents a remarkable survival that deserves greater recognition. Through the performance and recording of shanties, The Barrouallie Whalers have been interpreting and publicising Barrouallie’s whaling heritage for an international audience since 2001.

IJIH volumes Vol.2

Museums and the Intangible Heritage : the Case Study of the Afrikaans Language Museum

Author : Matilda Burden

Two issues are addressed in this paper, namely the problem of representing heritage that is totally intangible in a museum ‘exhibition’, and the issue of the Afrikaans language and its place within the many officially recognized languages of the new South Africa. The two issues are linked in this analysis of the current exhibition in the Afrikaans Language Museum in Paarl, South Africa.

IJIH volumes Vol.2

Crossing Cultures through the Intangible Heritage: an Educational Programme about Migration in Greece

Author : Maria Vlachaki

This paper presents the preliminary results of a research programme on the social and cultural impact of migration into Greece conducted on the Greek island of Skiathos. The programme involved educational activities which were based on the collection and analysis of oral material. A school class of eleven years old students, both native and immigrants, was asked to search into their family history and bring to light heirlooms and related narrations which represented oral traditions in their countries. In a first phase of the project the artifacts and the accompanying oral material were used as stimuli for discussion between native and immigrant children in the class. Subsequently, the collected tangible and intangible material was displayed in a temporary museum exhibition entitled ‘With a suitcase full of dreams’. The perceptions which all the groups of children, participants and visitors, native and immigrants had about migration before and after the educational program were recorded and analyzed in relation to the impact of the oral traditions on them. The results of the study are discussed with respect to the new communicative role which institutions of formal and informal learning could undertake due to the multiple use of intangible heritage in the approach of subtle social subjects such as migration. Among the most important findings was the fact that children who took part in the project and visited the exhibition realized that through discovering other people’s culture they could develop their knowledge of unknown aspects of their own culture and history.

IJIH volumes Vol.2

A Major Advance towards a Holistic Approach to Heritage Conservation: the 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention

Author : Mounir Bouchenaki

By adopting the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, the October 2003 General Conference of UNESCO of 190 Member States, signaled a historic turning point in the comprehension of the concept and definition of heritage within contemporary societies, and of related actions for its safeguarding and preservation.
Only two decades following the adoption of the World Heritage Convention in 1972 were needed to progress to a new stage in the analysis of heritage on an international scale. For some, this was an indication of the extreme mobility of ideas; for others it restored the cultural balance or simply reflected the rapid acceleration of ideas through time, among the actors of the international community of heritage. However, it really represented the achievement of an idea born in 1946 with the coming into being of UNESCO itself: that of the universal nature of cultures.

IJIH volumes Vol.2

Project Report:the National 'Human Living Treasures' Programme of the Astra Museum, Sibiu, Romania

Author : Corneliu Ioan Bucur

IJIH volumes Vol.2

2007: the Year of Jeju Folklore Project-Reviving the Cultural Heritage of Nature's Paradise

Author : Minho Han

In 2006, the National Folk Museum of Korea (NFMK) initiated the project The Year of Local Folklore. The project is to be carried out by both NFMK and local governments. Extending over 10 years, the project is scheduled to cover the whole nation, focusing on specific regions, one by one, each for two years. For the first year, intensive research will conducted on the folklore of the chosen region. In the second year, exhibitions, performances, and academic conferences, based on the results of the first year’s research, will be held. In short, the projects will lay the foundations on which local governments and residents will further promote their culture.
Jeju Island was selected as the project’s first target because its folklore has been conserved relatively well due to the island’s separation from the mainland, but, because of rapid development in recent years, it is now at risk of extinction.

IJIH volumes Vol.2

Conference Report: Tangible-Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Sustainable Dichotomy? the 7th Annual Cambridge Heritage Seminar

Author : Charlotte Andrews & Dacia Viejo-Rose & Britt Baillie & Benjamin Morris

IJIH volumes Vol.2

Symposium Report: Only in America? Ethnographic Archives, Communities of Orinin and Intangible Cultural Heritage

Author : Martin Skrydstrup

IJIH volumes Vol.2

Project Report: Born in Europe: an International Programme on Representing Migrant Experiences in European Museums

Author : Udo Gößwald

IJIH volumes Vol.2

Book Review: Tim Harte & Ineke Vorster. Indigenous Knowledge on the South Arfican Landscape: Potentials for Agricultural Development [Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2006]

Author : Patrick J. Boylan

IJIH volumes Vol.2

Brief biographies of the Authors

Author : Volume 2

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