SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Discourse on music as heritage has too often evaded the challenge of maintaining performance and creation, the factors that define artistic practice, and has instead concentrated on documentation, collecting, and archiving. Museums had or were establishing protocols to resist the increasing clamour for repatriation, arguing that when it came to preservation of the cultural heritage the West knew best. The still-life existence of preserved forms continues to sit uncomfortably, even if increasingly commonly, with contemporary developments, be they fusions of the local with popular music, avant-garde compositions, or reinterpretations of the local on urban stages and at festivals. The Convention took over from three proclamations of UNESCO Masterpieces in the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. In retrospect, it was these that effectively tamed scholarly critique, because academics were employed both by local groups and state authorities to prepare submissions and were then commissioned by UNESCO, through its affiliated organizations, to evaluate these submissions.