Rio, June 28, 2004 (Agência Brasil) - This year the samba may join the global list of non-material cultural goods that must be preserved. This issue will be discussed during the First Latin American Regional Seminar on the Unesco Convention for the Protection of the Non-Material Cultural Patrimony. The seminar, organized by the United Nations Education, Science, and Culture Organization (Unesco) in Brazil, is being held in the city of Parati, on the Green Coast of the state of Rio de Janeiro, from June 28-30.

The Unesco Coordinator in Rio de Janeiro, Pedro Lessa, told the Agência Brasil that the meeting will try to define what is necessary for the consensus among the 189 Unesco member countries on the new Convention for the Proclamation of Masterworks of the Cultural and Non-Material Patrimony of Humanity to be made applicable by local legislatures, specifically, within Latin America.

The list of the Global Cultural and Non-material Patrimony was an initiative of the Unesco Director General, Koshiro Matsura. In the first list of 28 masterworks, formulated 2 years ago, Brazil is represented by the oral and graphic expressions of the Wajãpi Indians, from the state of Amapá. Lessa informed that the body adornments, known as "kusiwa," created by the Wajãpi using vegetable dyes, and the original language, containing around 580 elements, developed by the tribe contributed to the decision.

The Unesco list underscores the importance of honoring specific manifestations of oral culture, music among them, as ways to identify a society and its customs, conveying the unique character of a country's or region's local culture that is neither repeated elsewhere in the world nor touched by the marks of globalization, Lessa explained.

The Unesco list is revised every 2 years, and, for the sake of protecting these phenomena, each member country can include a non-material cultural treasure in each new publication, as is the case with the world's physical patrimony. The proposal to recognize the samba as a Brazilian reference point, considering that it reflects a congeries of behaviors and expressions incorporated by Brazilian culture, was submitted to Unesco by the Ministry of Culture. Lessa pointed out that in the samba one can identify the practice of marches as characteristic of the Portuguese colonizers, the use of feathers in the costumes as an Indian influence, and the rhythm of the music itself as the result of African influence.

The international specialists and Latin American government representatives who are participating in the seminar intend to encourage these countries to adhere to the Convention, as well as sketching a panorama of the continent's non-material cultural patrimony. At the conclusion of the event, recommendations will be made with guidelines for elaborating suitable specific laws applicable within the legal context of each nation, Lessa declared.

Reporter: Alana Gandra
Translator: David Silberstein