TIRANA, June 22 – Albanian and regional folklore musicians and dancers have come together in the traditional Permet festival in southern Albania, celebrating the country’s cultural diversity.
Musicians and dancers from several Albanian regions but also from Kosovo and the Ioannina region in Greece are performing in the three-day festival which closes on June 24. The festival is supported by
International Council of Organizations of Folklore Festivals and Folk Arts (IOFF), a France-based international organization and official UNESCO partner devoted to the safeguarding, promotion and diffusion of traditional culture and folk arts.
Permet, which is holding its 14th edition of Multicultural festival, was selected as a host because of its diversity as a town where different cultures and ethnicities coexist and as the hometown of Albanian folk music including late maestro Laver Bariu, but also to promote cultural tourism in a region also famous for its cultural heritage and rafting on Vjosa River and the Lengarica Canyon.
This edition’s opening night also promoted clarinet music by local Permet groups who keep alive Laver Bariu’s heritage.
Laver Bariu, Albania’s most popular and greatest clarinetist passed away in 2014 at 81 in his hometown of Permet which he promoted in Albania and abroad with his wonderful tunes of local folk tunes. Laver Bariu is arguably the best known Albanian clarinetist of the last half century and an important figure in the development of urban folk music in the south-eastern Albanian Tosk region.
His iso-polyphony tunes have been placed under UNESCO protection as “a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity.”
