Bread, brandy and bees vie to join Unesco’s culture club list
On the face of it, not much appears to link the French baguette, Georgia’s traditional equestrian games, Cuban light rum, Holy Week in Guatemala, Japan’s ritual furyu-odori dances and the Maghreb hot chilli-pepper paste known as harissa.
But along with Serbia’s šljivovica plum brandy, the oral tradition of camel-calling in Saudi Arabia, Oman and UAE and a central Asian lute called the Rubāb, all could soon be recognised as part of humanity’s intangible cultural heritage.
A 24-member intergovernmental committee of Unesco, the UN’s cultural agency, is meeting this week in Rabat, Morocco, to consider which of 56 proposed “human treasures” merit adding to the 530 its annual gatherings have already selected.
“The baguette certainly deserves to be,” Valentin Testard, a Paris baker, told France Info radio. “The recipe may be simple: water, flour, salt and yeast. But the baker’s touch makes the difference.” An estimated 320 baguettes are sold every second in France, making it an inseparable component of French culinary culture, he said.
Four of the suggested newcomers
– a style of Chilean ceramics, ancient Ahlat stonework from Turkey, the pottery of the Vietnamese Chăm people and a bell-shaped skirt from Albania known as the xhubleta – are deemed so threatened as to be in urgent need of international protection.
The remainder, while somewhat less endangered, are still considered by the governments that put them forward as worthy of recognition as part of the “knowledge and skills necessary for traditional craftsmanship and cultural practices to be transmitted from generation to generation”.
The world heritage sites scheme, also administered by Unesco, may be better known for judging places including Stonehenge, the Taj Mahal and the Egyptian pyramids to be of “outstanding
universal value to humanity”, but the music, handicrafts, food, drink, rituals, dances and customs on the intangible heritage list constitute “a living heritage which, transmitted from generation to generation, gives communities a feeling of identity and continuity considered essential for the respect of cultural diversity and human creativity”, says Unesco.
The 2003 convention has so far been signed by 180 countries – although not by the UK, which explains why uniquely British rituals such as morris dancing, tea-drinking and cheese rolling are yet to enjoy Unesco recognition.
The chai culture of Azerbaijan and Turkey and “traditional tea-processing techniques and associated social practices” in China, however, are very much under consideration this year, as is the “knowledge of the light rum masters” of Cuba.
Other contenders include a cold North Korean noodle dish called naengmyeon, the 15 August festivities of two highland communities in Greece, the al-Mansaf banquet in Jordan, the altiţă embroidered blouse of Romania, and – rather more prosaically – beekeeping in Slovenia, bell-ringing in Spain and “fairground culture” in Belgium.
Already on the list are Korean tightrope walking, French gastronomy and Mongolian camel coaxing, along with celebrated dishes including Neapolitan pizza, north African couscous, Maltese flattened sourdough and Croatian ginger biscuits.
Luxembourg’s hopping procession in Echternach, an eccentric 500-yearold traditional Pentecost procession to the tomb of St Willibrord in which
thousands hop from foot to foot along the entire route to the same traditional tune, is in there.
So, too, is the annual grass-scything competition of the Kupres municipality in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the traditional pomegranate festivities of Azerbaijan known as Nar Bayrami, Finland’s sauna culture, Jamaican reggae and the Mediterranean diet.
In previous years the committee has ratified almost all nominations and early signs were that it would do likewise this year, with the traditional Kun L’bokator martial arts of Cambodia, the Kolo chain dance of St Tryphon – as performed in Boka Kotorska, Croatia – and the bear festivities of the Pyrenees winning rapid approval.
The committee’s deliberations, which are livestreamed and – it should be said – considerably less entertaining than many of the gastronomic specialties, customs and instruments they are considering, continue until Saturday.