Brazil - Fandango's Living Museum

Fandango is a popular music and dance expression in coastal communities in southern and south-eastern Brazil. Fandango songs are called modas and are played with handmade instruments – viola, fiddle and frame drum. Traditionally, fandangos were offered as payment for collective activities, such as planting, harvesting and fishing. However, a decline in collective work has led to fandango losing its prestige and sense of identity: many representatives have died and new generations are indifferent to it. Fandango’s Living Museum was conceived to promote safeguarding actions for fandango as an important part of their cultural heritage. The initiative came from a non-governmental organization, Caburé Cultural Association. Approximately 300 local practitioners or fandangueiros have participated to create an open-air community museum and a circuit of visiting and exchanging experience, which includes houses of fandangueiros and musical instrument makers, cultural and research centres, and places for selling local handicrafts. The museum has promoted awareness-raising by organizing local performances, running workshops in partnership with schoolteachers, publishing books and CDs, creating a website, and making bibliographic and audiovisual collections available. The model is based on cooperation, and can be adapted for other cultural expressions and similar regional contexts, taking into account their local characteristics.

Brazil - Call for projects of the National Programme of Intangible Heritage

Each year, a national call for projects from the Programa Nacional de Patrimônio Imaterial encourages and supports safeguarding initiatives and practices proposed by the Brazilian society for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage. The projects must involve the participation of the community and groups concerned, promote social inclusion and improvement of the life conditions of creators and bearers of such heritage, and respect individual and collective rights. Most projects includes activities such as mapping, inventories and ethnographic research; information systematization and database creation and/or implementation; production or preservation of documentation and ethnographic archives; promotion and transmission of traditional knowledge to new generations; and strengthening communities’ capacities for research, safeguarding and education. Projects can be presented by local government institutions or non-profit private organizations, but must have the prior agreement of the communities involved. The selection process is organized by the Intangible Heritage Department of IPHAN (National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute) in Brasilia, with projects evaluated by a national committee of specialists. Each project selected receives approximately R$100,000 (US$50,000) and is frequently realized within twelve months. The call for projects aims to strengthen community safeguarding processes and institutions, and to create networks between different institutional and social actors. As such, the process constitutes a model for financing and fostering initiatives of the civil society for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage.

Brazil - Yaokwa, the Enawene Nawe people's ritual for the maintenance of social and cosmic order

The Enawene Nawe people live in the basin of the Juruena River in the southern Amazon rainforest. They perform the Yaokwa ritual every year during the drought period to honour the Yakairiti spirits, thereby ensuring cosmic and social order for the different clans. The ritual links local biodiversity to a complex, symbolic cosmology that connects the different but inseparable domains of society, culture and nature. It is integrated into their everyday activities over the course of seven months during which the clans alternate responsibilities: one group embarks on fishing expeditions throughout the area while another prepares offerings of rock salt, fish and ritual food for the spirits, and performs music and dance. The ritual combines knowledge of agriculture, food processing, handicrafts (costumes, tools and musical instruments) and the construction of houses and fishing dams. Yaokwa and the local biodiversity it celebrates represent an extremely delicate and fragile ecosystem whose continuity depends directly on its conservation. However, both are now seriously threatened by deforestation and invasive practices, including intensive mining and logging, extensive livestock activity, water pollution, degradation of headwaters, unregulated processes of urban settlement, construction of roads, waterways and dams, drainage and diversion of rivers, burning of forests and illegal fishing and trade in wildlife.

Brazil - Frevo, performing arts of the Carnival of Recife

Frevo is a Brazilian artistic expression comprising music and dance, performed mainly during the Carnival of Recife. Its quick frenetic and vigorous rhythm draws upon the fusion of musical genres such as marching music, Brazilian tango, square dance, polka and pieces of classical repertoire, performed by martial bands and fanfares. The music is essentially urban, and like the accompanying dance, ‘Passo’, is vigorous and subversive. The dance stems from the skill and agility of capoeira fighters, who improvise leaps to the electrifying sound of steel orchestras and bands. Practitioners of Frevo and Passo are part of associations, each of which participates in parades for the carnival. Their headquarters provide support for the development, preservation and transmission of knowledge and skills related to Frevo. The element also has a close connection to the beliefs and symbolic universe of the practitioners’ religion. Several associations have colours related to the members’ devotion and various embellishments have religious meanings. Frevo is formed through the creativity and cultural riches that comes from the great mix of music, dance, capoeira and crafts, among others, demonstrating the ingenuity and creative ability of its practitioners. This ability to promote human creativity and respect for cultural diversity is inherent to Frevo.

Brazil - Círio de Nazaré (The Taper of Our Lady of Nazareth) in the city of Belém, Pará

The Círio de Nazaré festival in Belém honours Our Lady of Nazareth. The main procession concludes the festivities on the second Sunday of October, when a wooden image of Our Lady of Nazareth is carried from Sé Cathedral to Sanctuary Square¬¬¬, but the celebrations start in August and run until fifteen days after the procession. Almost the entire city participates and vast numbers of pilgrims travel from across Brazil to attend what is one of the world’s largest religious gatherings. The celebration incorporates numerous cultural elements that reflect Brazil’s multicultural society, including Amazonian culture and cuisine, and crafts such as toys made of local palm wood. The blending of the sacred and the profane gives this event religious, aesthetic, touristic, social and cultural dimensions. Boats play a symbolic role in the procession as Our Lady of Nazareth is the patron saint of sailors. Devotees create small altars in their homes, shops, bars, markets and public institutions. Transmission occurs within families, with small children and teenagers accompanying their parents to the festivities. For many, the Círio is an annual homecoming; for others, it is a space for political demonstrations.

Brazil - Capoeira circle

Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian cultural practice – simultaneously a fight and a dance – that can be interpreted as a tradition, a sport and even an art form. Capoeira players form a circle at the centre of which two players engage with one another. The movements require great bodily dexterity. The other players around the circle sing, chant, clap and play percussive instruments. Capoeira circles are formed by a group of people of any gender, and comprise a master, counter-master and disciples. The master is the bearer and guardian of the knowledge of the circle, and is expected to teach the repertoire and to maintain the group’s cohesion and its observance to a ritual code. The master usually plays a single string percussion instrument, starts the chants, and leads the game’s timing and rhythm. All participants are expected to know how to make and play the instrument, sing a shared repertoire of chants, improvise songs, know and respect the codes of ethics and conduct, and perform the movements, steps and strikes. The capoeira circle is a place where knowledge and skills are learned by observation and imitation. It also functions as an affirmation of mutual respect between communities, groups and individuals and promotes social integration and the memory of resistance to historical oppression.

Brazil - Cultural Complex of Bumba-meu-boi from Maranhão

The Cultural Complex of Bumba-meu-boi from Maranhão is a ritualistic practice involving forms of musical, choreographic, performing and ludic expression, in which the practitioners’ relationship with the sacred is mediated by the figure of the ox. The practice features certain key distinguishing elements: the cycle of life; the mystical-religious universe; and the ox itself. The practice is heavily charged with symbolism: by reproducing the cycle of birth, life and death, it offers a metaphor for human existence itself. There are similar forms of expression in other Brazilian states, but in Maranhão Bumba-meu-boi is distinguished by the various styles and groups it includes, as well as by the intrinsic relationship between faith, festivities and art. Each year, the Bumba groups from Maranhão reinvent this celebration, creating the songs, comedies, the embroideries on the ox leather and the performers’ costumes. Divided into five main ‘accents’ with particular features, the groups, albeit diverse, share a yearly calendar of performances and festivities. The festival cycle – which reaches its peak at the end of June – may last for four to eight months, involving the following stages: rehearsals; the pre-season; baptisms; public performances or ‘brincadas’; and rituals around the ox’s death. The practice is a period of renovation during which energies are reinvigorated, and is transmitted through children’s groups, dance workshops, and spontaneously within the group.

Brazil - Oral and graphic expressions of the Wajapi

Brazil - Samba de Roda of the Recôncavo of Bahia