Kushtdepdi rite of singing and dancing is a performing art combining the genres of creative poetizing focused on good feelings and wishes, its singing with vocal improvisation and dancing with movements of hands, gestures and footsteps in accordance with the tune of the song. The element serves as a tool and a medium for conveying good wishes for happiness, mutual respect, solidarity, social cohesion to the wide public and youth. The element is considered as an inseparable part of child birth ceremonies, wedding ceremonies and national celebrations. Its introductory part starts with singing poetic words of best wishes for well-being, happiness and sermon for the youth to keep close ties with elders that is performed by a seated group of respected women dressed in traditional costumes. Its next stage continues with inviting performers to start the rite and then the performance is led by singing of a couple of poetry singers (traditionally a woman and a man) with dances to the accompaniment of songs in a semi-closed or closed circles. Dancing movements start with three steps on right foot and then simultaneously tramping and clapping which are intended to drive maleficence and misfortune away from the future life. The element is performed at the end of events concluding in a positive note as a prayer to the nature for fertility, procreation, solidarity and peace.

Turkmenistan 2017

Singing art is one of the important areas of folk performing art. The folk song reflects the life of people: their work, thoughts, moods, feelings, skills and knowledge. People need a folk song as an art form that creates beauty with original expressive means: musical, dynamic, rhythmic and audible. By these means, she serves a person in life, helping in work and holidays, in sorrow and joy. The Uzbek singing art has different directions.

Olan is one of the well-preserved types of folk song art in Uzbekistan. The beauty of them lies in the possibilities of improvisation, the simplicity of rhythms, and paying special attention to the text when performing. Aytys available to the brotherly Kazakh and Kyrgyz peoples has a connection with our Olan. Olans are executed without instrumenttal tracking. Olans are alternate singing and the exchange of lines between a guy and a girl. Replicas can also be exchanged between performer groups. Various topics are used, mainly love.

Lapar is a song about eternal and female. This is a song about waiting for love, about the feeling that came, about the love of the deceived, about the upheavals of female fate and such desired happiness. Lapar is sad and fun, he happens to be built as a song-thought, or maybe sound like ardent plot pieces. Of particular interest is the lapar, which is performed in a roll call dialogue between a man and a woman. Then lapar turns into an amazing musical performance, into an ardent and crafty game.

Rūkada Nātya is a type of drama performed using string puppets, traditionally meant for providing innocuous entertainment and conveying moral lessons to village communities. Themes are chosen from folktales, Buddhist stories, ancient literature, historical narratives, and the trivia with humorous anecdotes from contemporary life or from nādagam, an extinct form of ‘folk opera’. Puppeteers prepare their own handwritten scripts with dialogs and songs, and recite them, while manipulating the puppets. Puppeteers make their own wooden puppets with movable joints that represent either ‘static roles’ with fewer movable joints and of near life-size; or ‘active roles’ with many movable joints and of 3.5’ to 4.5’ in height. Puppets are dressed with colourful costumes that identify the characters they portray. Puppeteers manipulate them using strings tied to single short bars or two crossed-bars held by hand, while standing on an elevated horizontal platform and leaned onto a horizontal bar that is fixed across the stage about the shoulder-height of the puppeteers. A small band of musicians provides accompaniment using a harmonium, a violin, and a drum. Performances are held as community events at public spaces suitable for community gathering, mostly during festive times in the months of May and June, while special shows are held at schools and higher educational institutes. Makeshift stages, made of wooden frames and covered with black curtains on all sides to camouflage the strings to create an in illusion of reality. Performances are held in evenings in a well-covered space under dim light to enhance the illusion.

Sri Lanka 2018

Daimokutate is a performing art where young people read aloud in turn the lines for each character in a tale without background music. The repertoire of Daimokutate performed for the past one hundred years consists of two tales about the feud between the Genji and Heike clans which actually happened in Japan in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These stories have eight and ten characters. Recently Daimokutate with fewer characters are often performed. The stage is installed outside the main hall of the Yahashira Shrine in the community; a wooden board of 1.8 meter squares with a straw-made mat on it is placed within an area of approximately 3.6 meters wide and 4.5 meters deep delineated with bamboo fences of approximately 1 meter in height. After seven o’clock in the evening, an old man guides to the stage young men singing in a line, wearing samurai clothes, and holding bows in their hands. They stand on the stage, leaving space between them, and face the centre with their backs toward the fence. When the old man calls the name of a character in a tale, the young man taking that role reads aloud a long script with a distinctive accent and intonation. No specific acting can be seen. Calling on the young men one by one, approximately twenty-six scripts are read aloud in turns. Then, one young man advances to the centre and rhythmically stamps his feet. Finally all say together the celebratory remarks, and they are guided again off the stage by the old man while singing in a line. It takes approximately one hour in total. Daimokutate is a performing art carried out by a person who takes the role of a specific character and simply reads aloud with almost no acting. Currently in Japan there are no performing arts similar to this. This performing art is important in that it reminds us of the image of performing arts existing in Japan from the twelfth to around the seventeenth centuries Daimokutate has been transmitted and performed for the public as part of the distinctive local culture by the people in the community for many years. Japan has no performing art similar to this. The more its value is recognized in the history of Japanese performing arts, the more fully the people of that community understand it as part of their own valuable culture. Designated by the Government in 1976 as an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property, it is widely recognized as an element of important cultural heritage reflecting the shifts in the Japanese daily life style. From the seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries, Daimokutate was transmitted by the twenty-two families in the Kami-fukawa community. The twenty-two families recognized the Yahashira Shrine as their guardian and constituted a community. The eldest son recognized as the heir of each family performed Daimokutate on the eve of the festivals of the Yahashira Shrine at the age of seventeen. Performing Daimokutate is a sign of formal admission to the community of the twenty-two families. Since the twentieth century, in addition to the twenty-two families, people who worship the Yahashira Shrine have also participated in the transmission and the public performance of Daimokutate. If there is no young man exactly seventeen years of age in the community, these days a senior young man assumes the role instead. Daimokutate constitutes of a long script with a kind of melody. Roles in the tale are assigned to young men in August, two months before the public performance, so that they can completely memorize their respective scripts; they practice under the instructions of former performers every Sunday. Every night from October 8th to 10th, they gather and practice intensively. On the morning of the performance day, they make the stage and prepare for the actual performance before the public at night. The community of Kami-fukawa which has transmitted Daimokutate is located deep in the mountains, and life was severe. Stronger solidarity and more mutual cooperation were required of this community than of other communities. Thus, Daimokutate is recognized to be indispensable for the local solidarity, and hence it has been transmitted from generation to generation to the present day, and performed every year. Members of the transmitting group and their local community recognize Daimokutate as part of their own excellent, distinctive culture, and take pride in it in relation to other groups and communities. Participation in the performance of Daimokutate once meant approval of admission to the community. Even today the transmission and the performance of Daimokutate allow the group and community to reconfirm their own identity, and reinforce their continuity. Daimokutate is a performing art transmitted down to today by ordinary Japanese for many years, and still performed, reflecting the Japanese sense of performing arts. The Japanese concept of confirmation of a community can be found in the background of the transmission and the performance of Daimokutate. Daimokutate mentioned above has a significant meaning in today’s Japan from a social and cultural viewpoint. The bearers continue their efforts to ensure that this inheritance from their ancestors is transmitted to the future.

Japan 2009

Ancient Chinese divided the circle of the annual motion of the sun into 24 equal segments; each segment was called a “jie qi” or solar term. Hence the 24 segments are collectively called the Twenty-four Solar Terms. This system of time embodies the traditional knowledge and the social practices through which Chinese organize their perception of the regularity of seasons, of astronomical laws and of other local natural phenomena occurring in the course of the year. It is an indispensable component of the traditional Chinese calendrics and its living applications, serving as a time-frame for agricultural activities and daily life. In International circle of meteorology, this cognitive system has been honored as the Fifth Great Invention of China. Transmitted through generations, the element has profoundly influenced Chinese people’s way of thinking and code of conduct. Upon a specific solar term, people spontaneously arrange farming and daily routine as well as basic necessities of life. Thus this knowledge continuum of time is sustained through a variety of ritual practices and folk activities. Thereby the Twenty-four Solar Terms is an important carrier of Chinese cultural identity.

China 2016

Khalfa is a woman-performer of folk songs and instrumental music, a poetess in Khoresm Oasis, who embodies traditions of oral folk art. In terms of activity, there are the following types of khalfas: khalfa sozi (khalfa-musician), who performs folk instrumental melodies; khalfa yodoghiy (khalfa-singer and khalfa-poetess), who performs folk songs at wedding ceremonies and festivities, while accompanying her singing by playing on a musical instrument; khalfa kitobiy (khalfa-book lover), who reads old books of religious themes during commemoration and rituals events ("mushkulkushod" – literally "relief"); khalfa dostonchi (khalfa-narrator); khalfa raqqosa or khalfa oyinchi (khalfa-dancer). In Khoresm two directions of khalfa performance became widespread, i.e. ensemble performance and solo performance. In ensemble performance it is possible to see a leading woman-performer, who sings songs under accompaniment of accordion (i.e. Russian diatonic accordion, which has been existence in Khoresm since XIX centure and which is called "qol soz"), doira player (who accompanies singing by playing on doira; sometimes she can act as a dancer as well) and dancers (who accompany singing with their dances; they usually dance with kajraks (castanets), or sometimes, sing along and play on doira).

Dastan or Doston is a lyric-epic genre, a large-sized epic work in oral and written literature. The word "doston" is used in the meaning of "narrative", "story", "adventure", "description" and "praise". As a literary term this word stands for epic works of large size in oral folk art and written literature. Though, dostons of written and oral literature differ significantly from each other in terms of means and methods used in describing and depicting life. Thus, dostons, which are examples of oral creativity, differ from those which are examples of written literature, with existence of versions (for example, nearly 50 versions of doston "Alpomish", and about 100 dostons from the cycle of "Goroghli" were written down up to present), universality and traditionalism. Dostons, which represent the brightest examples of intangible cultural heritage, are usually mastered, performed and inherited (transmitted) orally. And bakhshis, who are performers of dostons, are called differently across Uzbekistan. Dostons have very ancient historical roots. They, based on the imagination of the people, reflect historical events through generalized characters. Therefore it is possible to observe epic generalization in them. And such a generalization embodies ideals and aspirations of the people about social justice. Hence, typical features of doston are epicism, monumentalism. In terms of compositional and narrative structure, doston covers complex events and occurrences. These events and occurrences, which are heroic in nature, unite around a single hero, who represents the ideals of the people. And such a hero, who has extraordinary powers, embodies hopes and aspirations of the entire nation.

Depending upon the quantity of anklebones, the number of players can be established. The players place a rug or quilted felt rug and scatter ankle bones over the rug and sit round the rug. The senior or honorary person starts playing. The players' play ankle bones alternate according to clockwise. There is a piece of mail imitating the armour of ancient warriors. This piece is called the "arrow" or piece of mail. The player tosses up the piece of mail toward the air. Before the fall of piece of mail, the player collects anklebones as much as possible and clenches them in the palm and receives the tossed piece of mail at its palm without letting the piece of mail fall on the ground. Each player passes its turn to the next player if touches other scattered ankle bones, ex-cept of its clenched ankle bones, anklebones slip out of the player's hand or the player does not receive the tossed piece of mail on its palm

Quan họ is a form of alternate singing between males and females, once only popular in 49 villages of the ancient Kinh Bắc region, presently in Bắc Ninh and Bắc Giang provinces. The singing tradition is an intergral part of tục kết chạ (friendship custom) between villages, tục kết bạn (friend-making custom) between groups of singers, as well as tục ngủ bọn (sleepover custom). During these twining occasions, groups of quan họ singers from two villages sing throughout day and night. Quan họ songs are sung in harmony as alternating verses by two females (liền chị) from one village, and two males (liền anh) from the twined village sing with similar melodies and responding lyrics. The twining relationship allows singers maintain as artistic and intimate friendship, marriage is not allowed. Quan họ singing has three main types: hát canh (the singing at a host’s house), hát thi lấy giải (singing for prizes), and hát hội (singing at festivals). Lim Festival, taking place on the 13th of the First Lunar month every year, is the most significant event to celebrate and commemorate the founding father of this singing tradition. Music accompaniment was introduced into quan họ singing several decades ago, giving ways to new forms of performance, such as on stage and in celebrations such as wedding, anniversaries and ceremonies.

Viet Nam 2009

Short song is one of the popular forms of folk songs, closest to the daily lives of people, richest in terms of repertory and sang with wide popularity with multitude versions. In terms of composition, short song has mostly 3-5 verses, each imply similar meanings with lyrical rhymes that prove, emphasize and conclude it from all facets. Melody of the Mongolian short song is mellifluous, easily imprinted in mind, and lyric of short songs is laconic, definite and poetically expressed. The theme of the Mongolian short songs are classified as, short song about lifestyle, love, philosophical or morality, wedding, ritual, humorous, historical, lullaby and respectful.