Epic songs lose UNESCO protection chance

TIRANA, Sept. 12 – Albania has lost its chance of getting UNESCO protection for its epic songs after missing the deadline of March 30 to submit its application file. Musicologist Vasil Tole, the head of the joint Albania-Kosovo working group preparing the UNESCO application said the failure was a result of the political decision making by the Albanian Culture Ministry.
Culture Minister Aldo Bumci had earlier said Albania would file a joint application with Kosovo, which has to be a UN member in order to be eligible for application.
Both Albania and Kosovo specialists had been coordinating efforts to put epic songs under UNESCO protection as endangered cultural heritage currently sung and played by only a dozen of elderly men in northern Albania.
The Songs of the Frontier Warriors (K쯧롋reshnik촨) are the best-known cycle of northern Albanian epic verse. Still sung by elderly men playing the one-stringed “lahuta,” these epic rhapsodies are the literary reflections of legends portraying and glorifying the heroic feats of warriors of the past. The main cycle, that of “Mujo and Halili,” preserves much of the flavour of other heroic cultures such as those mirrored in Homer’s Iliad in Greek, Beowulf in English, El Cid in Spanish, the Chanson de Roland in French, the Nibelungenlied in German and the Russian Byliny, says Albanian studies specialist Robert Elsie.
Apart from Albanian Folk Iso-polyphony, inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the ministry’s protection list also includes epic poems, linguistic dialects, central Albanian folklore music, traditional Shkodra music, the manufacturing of musical instruments, traditional dances by the Dropulli (Gjirokastra) young women.