BEER DRINKING, RUMBA NOMINATED FOR HERITAGE LIST

Many people know of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites, which include structures such as China’s Great Wall and Tanzania’s Stone Town of Zanzibar - “places on earth that are of outstanding universal value to humanity”; but fewer perhaps know of the UN agency’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

A snapshot of Belgium's beer-drinking culture.
(Photo: Stephane Radermacher)

This is an international register of cultural practices that are important for communities, in both traditional and modern ways, and 171 UNESCO member states have ratified a convention to safeguard such customs.

For ten years now, since the convention came into force in 2006, UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage Committee has met annually to choose nominees for inscription on the List, and next week members are meeting in Ethiopia to focus on traditional songs, rituals, celebrations and, in one case, beer drinking.

According to UNESCO, Belgium has put forward its beer-drinking culture for inscription on the Representative List, stating that “making and appreciating beer is part of the living heritage of a range of communities throughout” the country.

“It plays a role in daily life, as well as festive occasions,” says the Belgian application. “Almost 1,500 types of beer are produced in the country including by some Trappist [monk] communities.”

A group of children "rumbeando".
(Photo: National Council for Cultural Heritage, Cuba)

The submission from Belgium is among 37 requests for inscription on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (ICH), with others including rumba in Cuba, the Tahteeb stick game in Egypt, yoga in India, merengue music and dance in the Dominican Republic, a festival in Nigeria, and traditional wooden-boat making in Norway. 

“An essential criterion for the list is community,” said Tim Curtis, a cultural anthropologist and chief of UNESCO’s section on ICH. “The community voice takes precedence over the expert voice in this area.”

The Representative List so far numbers 336 inscribed elements and aims “to enhance the visibility of communities’ traditions and knowledge without recognizing standards of excellence or exclusivity”, says UNESCO.

Curtis told SWAN in an interview that another key aspect in the consideration for inclusion on the List is the “inter-generational transmission” of the custom.

Artists entertaining participants at Nigeria's Argungu
international fishing and cultural festival.
(Photo: A. Olagunju)

“As well as a historical or traditional function, it should have a future role as well,” he said. “I see it as an approach to heritage that is forward-looking, something that tends towards continuity.”

The Committee, meeting from Nov. 28 to Dec. 2 in Addis Ababa, comprises the representatives of 24 of the countries that have ratified the convention, and its members will equally examine five nominations for inscription on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding.

Among these are Portugal’s Bisalhães black pottery manufacturing process, whose future is “under threat” because of waning interest; and Uganda’s Ma’di “bowl lyre music and dance”, one of the oldest cultural practices of the country’s Ma’di people that is considered at risk - mainly because younger people think it “old-fashioned” and the materials used come from species that are currently endangered.

UNESCO said that the Committee will also examine issues concerning intangible heritage in emergency situations caused by conflict or natural disaster. It will “envisage safeguarding measures that can be applied in such cases and consider the role intangible heritage can play in restoring social cohesion and supporting reconciliation”, the agency said.

Merengue musicans in the Dominican Republic.
(Photo: Ministry of Culture)

Curtis explained that the Committee will furthermore look into the creation of “a monitoring instrument” to measure the convention’s impact and the progress achieved over the past 10 years.

“The real impact of the convention is whether countries are setting up programs to protect intangible heritage,” he said.

The fact that 171 “state parties” have ratified the convention at such a fast rate does show some commitment, according to culture experts, but there has to be action at the national level as well, even when it is practitioners of the custom that submit it for inclusion on the List.

Belgium’s beer-drinking culture was submitted by its German-speaking community, on behalf of all three of the country’s language groups, because “beer-drinking is an integral part of Belgian culture”, said spokesman Dirk Vandriessche.

“It’s really about the culture, and not about beer, and it is important to make that distinction,” he said in a telephone interview. “Every festivity is with beer.”

While this culture has long had hosts of admirers and seems at no risk of being swallowed up by modernization, other customs and practices - such as rumba - may need greater support and recognition, especially because of their traditional importance.

“Rumba in Cuba, with its chants, movements, gestures and music, acts as an expression of resistance and self-esteem while evoking grace, sensuality and joy to connect people,” says the Cuban submission.

It adds that the music and dance are associated with African heritage but also feature elements of Antillean culture and Spanish flamenco, reflecting significant historical movements. – A.M.

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OPINION: ART AND CONFRONTING A TRUMP PRESIDENCY

By Dr. Claire Oberon Garcia

Black people in the United States have long known that we live in a divided nation, and that the fault lines of these divisions lie along what previous generations called “the color line.” These fault lines are both material – the neighborhoods where we live, the segregated schools we attend, the employment we attain – and theoretical: how we interpret the world we live in and our place in it.

African Americans are profoundly aware of how race inflects every dimension of life in our country, and while many Americans of all backgrounds celebrated the election of the country’s first black president eight years ago, it has been clear that his election, rather than demonstrating how far the US has come on the racial front, the upsurge in anti-black behavior and sentiment that marked the years since Barack Obama’s election has shown how far we have yet to go. As CNN commentator Van Jones said as he viewed the electoral map on election night turning steadily red for Republican votes, “This is a whitelash.”

The election of Donald Trump as the 45^th President of the United States is white Americans’ definitive response to President Obama: a rejection of any legacy he may have tried to leave, and a repudiation of the forces that brought a black man to the White House after more than 400 years of African American presence in America. An overwhelming majority of white Americans chose a man who spent a lot of time and money trying to prove that Barack Obama was fundamentally unqualified as president on the level of the most basic criteria: citizenship. White Americans wanted their country back, and now they have it.

Even before Trump’s victory, I was frightened and dismayed that his candidacy had brought to the public sphere the barely submerged racist and misogynistic discourses that have become even more virulent in the wake of successes of civil rights and feminist activism (characterized by Trump and his followers as burdensome “political correctness”). Of course there is talk of “healing divisions” in US society. But these divisions aren’t mere policy disagreements, but incompatible narratives about the value and rights of human beings.

Race, Ethnicity and Migration Studies professors
Dwanna Robertson and Michael Sawyer
help college students understand and contextualize the
U.S. Presidential Election. (Photo: C. Oberon Garcia)

What to do in light of the resounding decision by millions of US voters to either ignore or malign the humanity, the citizenship rights, the sense of belonging, and the American Dreams of African Americans, Muslims, LGBTQ, women, and the disabled? The message that US voters sent loud and clear on 8 November (despite the fact that Hillary Clinton seems to have very, very narrowly won the popular vote) was that certain people do not belong, and the people who voted for Trump are willing to build literal walls and use language and stereotypes as figurative walls to keep these “Others” out of white, patriarchal spaces.

In the days following Election Day, social media was full of first-person accounts of people of color and LGBTQ citizens being taunted, and students, especially Latin and Muslim students, being bullied by white students. Spray painted on walls in various places were racist slogans and messages such as this one in Durham, North Carolina, on Nov. 9: “BLACK LIVES DON’T MATTER AND NEITHER DOES YOUR VOTES”.

Very quickly, the feelings of shock and rage among those in the US who feel frightened by and vulnerable under a Trump presidency developed into resolve. Thousands took to the streets in several US cities, chanting “Love trumps hate,” “Not my president,” and the perennial, “The people united will never be defeated.” Meanwhile, political leaders on both sides of the aisle, following the leads of President Obama and vanquished Secretary Hillary Clinton, spoke of “healing divisions” and “coming together.”

But how is it possible to “come together” when these divisions are marked by very real differences in values? When one side thinks that unambiguous racism is unimportant and disconnected from issues such as Supreme Court appointments, and the other side distrusts a candidate who has hundreds of supporters who sport t-shirts emblazoned with racist slogans and who chortles about his adventures in sexual assault? President-elect Trump’s characterization of all black citizens as terrified inhabitants of urban jungles, decades of disrespect for women, racialized maligning of immigrants, and other campaign rhetoric that sent his supporters into an avid frenzy confirms a long record of his denying the basic humanity and rights of people who are different from himself: people who are not white, male, wealthy, and powerful. But Trump is just one man, albeit as of the third Monday in January, 2017, one of the most powerful in the world. More terrifying to many Americans are his supporters, from his picks for positions such as Attorney General to the children of his voters who tell their classmates to “Go back to where you came from!”

Dr. Claire Oberon Garcia

Freshly wounded and fearful for a future that seems an all-too-familiar throwback to a shameful past of overt expressions and policies crafted to protect white supremacy, it is tempting to succumb to a feeling of panic, or dream of an escape to a personal Zion. Trump’s election is clearly a reaction to the hard-fought struggles and yet unfulfilled dreams of civil rights and feminist activists. Succumbing to panic and despair will threaten the very real gains that the US recently has made in becoming a more equitable and just society.  It is clear that those who don’t see themselves in Trump’s vision of the United States must unite, collaborate, and resist on the political front.

But we also must remember that when the humanity of individual or groups is violently assaulted, that we have the power of art. Toni Morrison, in an essay written for The Nation magazine shortly after George W. Bush’s election, noted that in times of violence and chaos and despair that “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” 

We must not interpret calls for “unity” and working as “one team” as calls to make peace with people, attitudes, and policies that strip people of their humanity and fundamental rights. If we truly want to heal our nation and the world in which it plays such a major role, we must confront our differences and affirm our collective humanity. Art, particularly writing, as Morrison notes, has the power to do this in unique ways. Through the shared medium of language, we are reminded that we are all in a web of community together, whether we like it or not: Americans share one nation but belong to many, as we all live together for better or worse on one irreplaceable planet.

The United States was already experiencing a racial and cultural nadir: Trump’s election puts the official seal on it. It seems as if white people and people of color live in parallel realities, and that one narrative simply can’t encompass the multiple truth of lived experience. But moments of crisis force us to articulate who we are and what we value. Just as in the period after the Civil War, perhaps the battles between the two Americas – white and “Other” – and the attendant suffering and loss will help us at least talk about how we might forge a more perfect union for the 21^st century.

Dr. Claire Oberon Garcia is a professor of English and Director of the Race, Ethnicity and Migration Studies Program at Colorado College in the United States.