This paper concerns the effects of the UNESCO policies of intangible cultural heritage (hereafter ICH) in the Pontic momo(y)eria. Momo(y)eria are Christmas customs of the Pontians—the descendants of the 1922 Black Sea Greek refugees. Similarly to other carnivalesque Christmas Balkan traditions, momo(y)eria involves masqueraded troupes, that under the sounds of traditional music, perform feverish dancing and satirical theatrical sketches as a kind of blessing for the new year. In 2016, the Kozani variant of the momo(y)eria custom, entered the UNESCO ICH international registry, becoming the first Greek tradition of such status. In this paper, I examine the outcomes of the 2016 recognition, for the custom and for its communities. Premised on extensive fieldwork, I offer an analysis of the momoyeria poetics and of its special music processes in relation to Kozani socio-economic realities and the Pontic politics of memory. Drawing from this analysis, I further investigate three major aspects: (1) how the 2016 ICH registration has affected local economy and community life; (2) whether the registration has contributed to the goal of sustainability as defined by UNESCO; and (3) the dialectics between UNESCO understandings of intangibility and Pontic visions of culture as living tradition. Ultimately, I demonstrate that while the 2016 recognition has indeed contributed to awareness about momo(y)eria and its music, it has also supported heritization practices that oppose Pontic sensitivities.

Of the 130 articles of South Korea’s Constitution, adopted in 1948 and last revised in 1987, the final article among the General Provisions, Article 9, provides that “the State shall strive to sustain and develop the cultural heritage and to enhance national culture.” In Article 69, the oath the President must take at the time of inauguration includes “endeavoring to develop national culture.” But what “national culture” is has remained amorphous and has left “national music and dance,” or gugak, largely ignored by lawmakers over the years. However, in June 2023, the National Assembly passed the Gugak Promotion Act, aiming to “conserve and transmit,” “foster and promote,” and “invigorate” the “gugak cultural industry.” In August, the Traditional Cultural Industry Promotion Act, designed to lay a foundation for a traditional cultural industry, promote economic development, and enhance the cultural lives of citizens, also became law. Together, these two Acts aspire to transform gugak from traditional performing arts in need of preservation into dynamic competitive cultural content suitable for entry into the international performing arts market. Building on the work of Seo Inhwa (2023) and Lee Dong-Yeon (2023) in relation to the proposal of a Gugak World Expo, this paper looks at the effects of these new laws on “old music,” and gayageum sanjo in particular, and how, especially under the pressures of AI and new media, older laws like the 1962 Cultural Property Protection Law are fraying along with the institutions and genres they once sought to protect.

In December 2023, the "practice of opera singing in Italy" was officially inscribed on the UNESCO List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In its final resolution, the UNESCO Committee stated that this practice was worthy of inscription because of the central place that opera and opera singing occupy in contemporary Italian culture. However, the slippery terminology used to identify the object of UNESCO’s recognition calls for further investigation: What exactly is Italian opera singing? Are there any sets of pedagogical rules that distinguish it from foreign styles of opera singing today? And what is the specific contribution of Italy and Italian musical institutions to the promotion of its current practice internationally? Based on about forty interviews with Italian music historians, singing teachers, theatre managers and opera singers, this paper explores how musical pasts are constructed in today’s Italy. I show that opera artists and theater administrators are committed to promoting what they believe to be the authentically Italian musical tradition of opera singing, and they rely on opera scholars to back up their claims. Italian musicologists, for their part, are often aware of the cultural sustainability issues involved in UNESCO’s support of musical practices (Chocano, Grant, Seeger, Schippers, Titon) and remain skeptical about the possibility of even arriving at a univocal definition of Italian opera singing. Nevertheless, many of them, along with opera artists and Italian music institutions, endorsed the UNESCO nomination, hoping to gain direct and indirect support for their discipline through state funding and international tourism.