Mehregan celebration is as important as Nowruz for Persians and it has its own unique traditions. Violets, sweets, rose water, candles, flowers, and fruits especially apples and pomegranates are set on a violet-coloured tablecloth to start the fest. Almond and pistachio are among the requirements to make this tradition as Persian as possible. Violets characterize Mehregan as the symbol of light, love, and friendship that dates back to the ancient days of Persia. Espand (rue seeds) will be thrown in the flames to be safe from the evil eye on this happy day. The ceremony begins with saying a prayer in front of a mirror. Hugs and kisses are exchanged after a handful of Noghl (sugar plum) is thrown over each other’s heads.\nIn most households, the entire family and guests stand in front of the altar table, facing the mirror during the ceremony. A traditional ritual here includes prayer and hymns followed by drinking fruit juices like pomegranate juice or sherbet, a classic Iranian beverage. And the application of the kohl from the Sormeh-dan is considered a blessing against evil forces which in traditional Zoroastrian communities, can mean the forces of Ahriman, the Evil Eye, and other such cursed actions. As guests and household members embrace and exchange gifts, seeds are thrown \n

Mongols move from place to place throughout four seasons in search for new pastures. In order to use the grass-land properly Mongols move from place to place and this has been an important part of their life and traditions associated with animal husbandry for hundreds of years. There are strict rules to follow for the practices of moving. Mongols have a tradition to move on a clear and cloudless day by observing the sky and weather. The head of the family decides where to encamp. After the loading of the camels or oxen is completed, the old sites of the ger and corral are cleaned. Ashes and rubbish are taken away. The old sites and holes where the tethering line was get leveled. The load leading horse’s main is cut. There is a custom that the lady of the house dressed in her best garment to lead the load on a horseback with fully decorated saddle.

Rooted in the ancestral traditions of the Fatumea and Fohorem communities in Covalima Municipality, Tebe Otas-Uluk is more than a dance—it is a collective act of memory, identity, and reverence. The name itself combines “tebe” (a traditional line dance) with Otas (ancestor) and Uluk (first or origin), signaling a ritual expression dedicated to those who came before.\n\nTraditionally performed by the elders of the community, this dance takes place during important communal gatherings such as ceremonies of healing, protection, thanksgiving, or agricultural celebration. Participants often wear traditional attire and move in side-by-side formations, linked by hands or shoulders, stepping rhythmically in unison to the beat of local drums, gongs, or the babadok (a hand-held percussion instrument). The dance circle forms a symbolic space where the living and the spirits of the ancestors meet.\n\nWhat sets Tebe Otas-Uluk apart is its solemn and purposeful character. The movement vocabulary is simple yet powerful: synchronized steps, grounded footwork, and fluid arm gestures that flow with the communal rhythm. Songs are chanted throughout the dance in the Tetun-Terik language, often carrying metaphorical meanings related to the land, family, and the ancestors’ wisdom. The lyrics function as oral archives, preserving knowledge and history that is not written but remembered through voice and motion.\n\nBecause of its deep spiritual roots, this dance is only performed on specific occasions, often after traditional leaders conduct consultations with spiritual entities or conduct rituals to prepare the ground. Each gesture, each chant, is believed to activate a connection to the ancestral realm—inviting blessings, healing, or protection for the community.\n\nIn recent years, however, the practice has become increasingly rare, with fewer young people learning the movements or understanding the embedded meanings. Despite this, dedicated elders continue to lead and teach the dance, ensuring its survival as a living heritage. For them, Tebe Otas-Uluk is not simply a performance—it is a prayer in motion, a ceremony that anchors the community to its origins and affirms its cultural continuity.

I am Alina Tamrakar. I am an architect currently working in documentation and restoration of heritage structures affected by the massive earthquake of 2015. I belong to Newa community who are the indigenous people of Kathmandu valley. Kathmandu is the capital of Nepal. Born and raised in a typical Newa family who has always put rituals and tradition in the first place, I was always very connected to the cultural heritage of Kathmandu. As I grew up being part of the festivals and rituals, there were always numbers of questions running inside: why do we celebrate these festivals, what is the story behind it, who initiated the traditions and so on. After the devastating earthquake took down so many monuments, some of which carried centuries-old history, it gave me time to reflect on the rich knowledge and skills that our ancestors held and handed it down to our generation. It also explained how tangible and intangible heritage are interlinked with each other. Also, a realization that there is still so much to learn from our heritage and to pass on to the next generation.\nAmong the Newa community, Tamrakars are one of such communities, who follow Buddhism. Gunla is one of many festivals celebrated in Kathmandu valley. It is the tenth month in Nepal Sambat lunar calendar, in which devotees from all around Kathmandu valley visit Swayambhu Stupa that is also one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites. The festival of Gunla last for one whole month. In addition to this, devotees also take a visit to different Buddhist courtyards called Baha-bahi and other stupas and chaityas. The devotees in the process recite Holy Scriptures and play devotional gunla music. Music groups from different communities take part in the procession. Like other numerous communities, Tamrakar community also has the musical group named “Tamrakar Gunla Baajan Khala” who have been taking part in playing gunla music and reciting Holy Scriptures from time immemorial. The procession starts from a traditional courtyard called “Piganani” in Maru, near Kathmandu Durbar Square. Piganani is the centre point of the location where Tamrakars initially settled in Kathmandu. Every day for the month of gunla, the community of around 20- 25 (on Saturdays and holidays the number increased to around 50 attendees) start the procession from Piganani at 5:30 am and visit the Swayambhu stupa and come back to Piganani and end the tour at around 8:00 am. On holidays, the team takes a longer route covering other major Buddhist monasteries, chaityas and stupas on the way. During the procession, the devotees and practitioners cover a distance of 6 kilometres.\nUntil three years back, I used to take part in the procession just as an audience listening to people reciting the scriptures and watching the team of young members playing the drums and cymbals to play devotional gunla music. Three years back, I enrolled as one of the practitioners and started taking part in the procession. I came to know that earlier, women were not allowed to play musical instruments in the gunla procession, but only take part as devotees. However, as time passed on, the society opened the doors for women as well. In today’s time, there are a huge number of women practitioners who have taken the initiative to be a part of the team.\nThe tradition of playing gunla music, according to local experts is thousands of years old practice. As much as this musical tour is interesting, it is equally full of knowledge regarding our culture and tradition. Such practices of cultural heritage are not only a matter of pride that an individual or the whole nation takes in but also a major affirmation that such huge collection of knowledge, skill and accomplishment that our ancestors have developed are being transferred to the next generation. Apart from carrying on the tradition, it is also very necessary that we understand the depth of each of these practices in order to keep the tradition alive in the long run. It is equally necessary that we know where our roots lie while we soar up to reach the sky. This is only possible when youths take the initiative to participate in these practices and talk about the “why”, “what” and “how” while they do so.\nDuring Gunla procession different traditional musical instruments are played. “Dhā” and “Nayo khin:” are drums played on one side by bare palm and with a wooden stick on the other are the main musical instruments played during the procession. The small cymbals called “tā” give the beat to the drums and big cymbals and trumpets are played along. For the first time, starting this year, flutes have also been added to the band. The music performance begins with “Dyo lhayegu”, which is a small introductory piece played in order to invoke the “Nāsa dya”, a deity of performing arts. There are separate pieces especially played depending upon the time and place in the procession. For example, the piece played while revolving a chaitya or stupa is different from a one played while beginning the procession.\nThe practice session for each year, begin one or two months prior to gunla month. Anyone who is capable of learning to play the instruments is eligible to participate. The members of Tamrakar community enrol their younger ones once they are ready to take part, while people from other communities are also welcomed to participate in learning and later take part in the procession. The practice sessions take place each evening in the courtyard of Piganani where a guru, a teacher takes a lead in taking music classes. In addition to a regular teacher, the elders in the Tamrakar Gunla Baajan community also offer their presence as well as their knowledge so that the learners get all the support they need. The sessions are one of such encouraging steps that the elder generation in the Tamrakar Gunla Baajan Khala take that make sure that the centuries-old tradition of playing gunla music is safely being transferred to the next generation.

The National Commission for Culture and the Arts of the Philippines (NCCA) is the official government agency for culture in the Philippines. It is the overall policy making body, coordinating, and grants giving agency for the preservation, development and promotion of Philippine arts and culture.\n\nIn 2015, ICHCAP supported the NCCA in digitizing around five hundred hours of analogue content through the Digitization Project of ICH-related Analogue Audiovisual Materials. Some of materials representative of traditions of Philippine ethnic groups were chosen and reproduced as Pagdaloy, flow of life in eight DVDs and two CDs, so they can be enjoyed by more people.\n\nThe videos contained in the collection come from Travel Time, a weekly travelogue that aired from 1986 to 2015 in the Philippines. The TV travel show provided detailed information about minority groups in the country. The NCCA, the project operator, was not only engaged in the digitization of analogue materials but also provided support throughout the production process, contributing to giving more people the opportunity to access valuable ICH materials.\n\nICHCAP Collection IV includes stories of eight Philippine ethnic groups in the Philippines. The story collection comes in a book format, with the DVDs depicting each of the stories. The two CDs feature music used for rituals, feasts, and farming. The collection also features music played by Uwang Ahadas and his family ensemble; Ahadas was named a National Living Treasure of the Philippines. The last page of the collection features a map indicating the areas the ethnic groups inhabit, to help audiences better understand the ethnic groups.\n\nICHCAP hopes that this collection will enable not just researchers in the relevant fields but also the general public to learn more about and become familiar with Philippine ICH.

The traditional musical instruments of Myanmar were prominent throughout the nation’s history. The instruments were developed as early as the Pyu Era, Bagan Era and many were dominant features of music during the Innwa Era and Konbaung Era.\n\nWhile some of these instruments have been preserved and are used today, others have been lost to history.\nIn an attempt to preserve the traditional musical instruments of Myanmar, the Ministry of Culture displayed traditional instruments and distributed the books about the instruments during an exhibition in 1955. This research shows thirty-three kinds of instruments. Moreover, in a 2003 celebration of traditional instruments, the Ministry of Culture exhibited over two hundred traditional instruments at the national museum.\nWhile the instruments on display were representative of many regions and states, many instruments were not included.\nBecause of this lack of full representativeness, additional research through field studies is required. This project proposal addresses this need.\n\nTo create a preliminary basis towards developing a national ICH inventory of craftsmanship and performing arts of traditional musical instruments in Myanmar. To safeguard ICH related to the craftsmanship and performing arts of traditional musical instruments and to promote cultural diversity among multi- ethnic groups in Myanmar. To raise awareness of the Myanmar public on the importance of ICH. To expand networking and information sharing between Myanmar and Korea.

Marriage to the Nùng ethnic minority is not merely that of a couple but has a greater meaning that is the ritual of community cohesion, keeping the ethnic group’s cultural identity. A wedding ceremony takes place in accordance with certain traditions and customs, such as bride and groom welcoming, ancestor worshiping, groom receiving; asking for a bride welcoming, etc. In the celebration to ask for the bride, the heads of the groom’s family will play music or sing to ask for the bride, and the bride’s family also plays music or sings in response. The instrumental music in Nùng weddings is mainly performed by men. Musical instruments may include the nhị (two-string fiddle), wind instruments, and cymbals.

This is a story about the roles and responsibilities of newly married Yapese couples and their families. It was told by Alukan, Mu’ut, Flan’med, Bapilung, and Fithingmew from the Old Age Program in Yap back in the 1970s. As a part of Yapese customs and traditions, married couples settled and resided at the husbands’ homes. A wife was asked to respect her in-laws with the utmost regard and to help her mother-in-law collaboratively with daily house chores like cooking, cleaning, and other women’s roles in the family. She sought advice from her mother-in-law every morning for preparing for the day. In return, the mother-in-law would lend a part of the land for gardening taro patches. Two taro patches were considered enough for the wife. One was for herself, and the other was for her husband and her mother-in-law. She was responsible for cleaning and planting taro patches and the garden given to her as well as for harvesting from them. After giving her the taro patches and garden, no other family members, including the mother-in-law herself, were allowed to take or harvest anything from there anymore. The wife would harvest for herself as well as for her husband and her mother-in-law, but would not harvest for her father-in-law until she reached a certain age. Once a wife moved in with her husband and his family, she was not supposed to go back to her home for receiving or harvesting. It was considered offensive to her husband and his family. On the other hand, the husband had to visit his inlaws often to learn their needs and provide them with what they needed. During his visits, he would bring betel nuts and coconuts for his in-laws. Every time he came back from fishing, a string of fish would be put aside for his in-laws as well.

The northern mountainous regions are the residential land of the Kinh people and twenty-eight out of fifty-four ethnic minorities in Vietnam. This land has diverse forms of folk culture in general and folk music in particular. The CD, Folk Music of Some Ethnic Minorities in the Northern Mountainous Regions of Vietnam introduces some repertoires of folk music that were recorded in 1959 (tracks 1, 2, 5, and 7), in 1964 (tracks 10 and 15) and in 1970 (tracks 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 16) and performed by folk artists from minority ethnic groups, such as Thái, Tày, Nùng, Cao lan, Phù lá, Hmông, of the northern mountainous regions. Although the sound quality of the recordings isn’t that good, the materials will be valuable to history and art researchers and those who love folk music. The recordings allow listeners to compare folk art of a time that was almost isolated with the outside world with folk art of our time—the time of Internet.

CD5_NARRATIVE TRADITIONS – ORAL EPICS AND BALLADS VOL. II: THE JAGAR AND THE EPIC OF ALHA\n\nOral epics, ballads, and narratives form a major part of the background of rituals, storytelling, and local mythologies – all an important part of the intangible cultural heritage of India. The vast range of oral epics in India, most often sung, also contain recitation and prose that explain the text. The meters vary greatly, and they all have different definitions and terms. For instance, the meter and singing of the Alha is called Alha Chhand. A wide variety of types of performances and expression of this genre exist. Some stories are narrated with scrolls that illustrate episodes. Sometimes, they are acted out, and sometimes sung, as in the case of the paddanas, which are performed while transplanting rice. Stuart Blackburn and Joyce Flueckiger distinguish three kinds of oral epics in India: martial, sacrificial, and romantic. \n\nSome epics tell a story with multiple episodes and characters, and some are “multi-story” oral epics. Oral epics in India are very closely tied to communities, with performers, audience, and participants all belonging to the same community. Most oral epics are associated to rituals, the performance of some being the ritual itself. Caste also plays an important role in the performance or patronage of the oral epic traditions in India. The great epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata in some cases, enter the world of these local oral epics, where the performers are considered to be reincarnations of heroes and gods from these epics. According to Komal Kothari, an eminent folklorist of India, this phenomenon happens when the impact of the oral epic spreads beyond its initial local boundaries. Though we are not able to present full performances of all the oral epics, we believe that these recordings provide a good glimpse into the variety of meters, singing styles, and contexts that exist within these traditions. Three oral epics are presented in this volume. They are all part of larger collections, and each one is contributed by an expert on the genre who has done extensive research. The paddanas were contributed by Peter Claus, the Nanda Devi jagar by William Sax, and Alha by Karine Schomer. This album presents extracts from two kinds of narrative traditions that are part of the intangible cultural heritage of two very different traditions and regions of India.

Pagdaloy, Flow of Life \n(2015 NCCA-ICHCAP Digitization Project of ICH-related Analogue Audiovisual Materials)\n\nThe National Commission for Culture and the Arts of the Philippines (NCCA) is the official government agency for culture in the Philippines. It is the overall policy making body, coordinating, and grants giving agency for the preservation, development and promotion of Philippine arts and culture.\n\nIn 2015, ICHCAP supported the NCCA in digitizing around five hundred hours of analogue content through the Digitization Project of ICH-related Analogue Audiovisual Materials. Some of materials representative of traditions of Philippine ethnic groups were chosen and reproduced as Pagdaloy, flow of life in eight DVDs and two CDs, so they can be enjoyed by more people.\n\nThe videos contained in the collection come from Travel Time, a weekly travelogue that aired from 1986 to 2015 in the Philippines. The TV travel show provided detailed information about minority groups in the country. The NCCA, the project operator, was not only engaged in the digitization of analogue materials but also provided support throughout the production process, contributing to giving more people the opportunity to access valuable ICH materials.\n\nICHCAP Collection IV includes stories of eight Philippine ethnic groups in the Philippines. The story collection comes in a book format, with the DVDs depicting each of the stories. The two CDs feature music used for rituals, feasts, and farming. The collection also features music played by Uwang Ahadas and his family ensemble; Ahadas was named a National Living Treasure of the Philippines. The last page of the collection features a map indicating the areas the ethnic groups inhabit, to help audiences better understand the ethnic groups.\n\nICHCAP hopes that this collection will enable not just researchers in the relevant fields but also the general public to learn more about and become familiar with Philippine ICH.

In 2015, ICHCAP with the National Commission of the Republic of Uzbekistan for UNESCO and the Fine Arts Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan released the CD collection Melodies from Uzbekistan as part of its cooperation project to restore and digitize analogue resources on ICH.\n\nThis selection of audio resources are aged audio recordings stored at the Fine Arts Institute of the Academy of Sciences that have been restored and converted into a format suitable for storage and playback in media used today. The audio tracks in the collection consist of folk music recorded from field research conducted in Uzbekistan and border regions from the 1950s to the 1980s as well as studio recordings made from the 1930s to the 1970s. The eight CDs contain Uzbek songs related to work, animal rearing, rituals, and other important parts of day-to-day life in the region; instrumental music featuring various traditional Uzbek musical instruments, such as the dutor and g'ajir nay; and important Islamic oral traditions, such as maqoms and dostons.\n\nAlthough the traditional music of Central Asia may be unfamiliar to listeners from other parts of the world, the CDs come with information booklets in Uzbek, English, and Korean to provide an engaging experience for people from outside the region.\nThe selection represents the diverse and rich musical traditions of Uzbekistan and will be invaluable resources in the field of ICH education and promotion.

On 28 October 2020, ICHCAP and the UNESCO Apia Office co-organized the 8th Pacific Network Meeting virtually. This meeting report includes presentation materials from the meeting as well as summaries of the meeting with the intent of providing information to promote international cooperation among experts and institutions in the ICH safeguarding field in the Pacific region.\n\n

ICH Courier is the quarterly magazine on ICH in the Asia-Pacific region issued by ICHCAP since 2009. Every issue has its own theme under the title of the Windows to ICH, and the theme of the Vol 44 is 'Traditional Knowledge to Lead a Healthy Life.'