Ms Shubha CHAUDHURI

• Vice-President, International Association of Sound and Audio Visual Archives, India

• Session 2: Presenter 1 (*Video Presentation)

Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage, and Community Involvement in India: An Individual View from the Field

To assess the extent of community involvement in safeguarding ICH is a complex issue in India as perhaps elsewhere in the subcontinent. As the implementation of the UNESCO 2003 convention is a matter of governmental policy involving governmental and non-governmental agencies, we are faced with the quandary of whether one assesses these policies and their impact or look through a wider lens at the extent of community involvement in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage.

There is no data that is available that would allow one to examine the impact of the convention, beyond perhaps that of elements that are inscribed on the Representative List. There are also many institutional initiatives that have impacted and involved community participation. In an attempt to piece together such a narrative, I am presenting a somewhat individual view from three decades of institutional involvement as well as fieldwork in areas that constitute some domains of ICH.

Shubha Chaudhuri has a Phd in Linguistics. She has been with the Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology of the American Institute of Indian Studies since its inception in 1982, and Director since 1985.

In the field of audio visual archiving her major interests have been database applications, research archives and ethnomusicology, issues of Intellectual Property Rights and community archives. She has presented papers at many national and international venues in these areas.

Her fieldwork has been has been in Western Rajasthan in India and more recently in Goa and Kutch. She has co authored with Daniel Neuman and Komal Kothari “Bards, Ballads and Boundaries : an ethnographic atlas of music in West Rajasthan, and co edited with Anthony Seeger “Archives for the future: global perspectives on Audio visual archiving in the 21^st Century” , and “ Remembered Rhythms: Essays on diaspora and the music of India”

She has served as Vice President of the International Association of Sound and Audio Visual Archives, the Executive Board of the ICTM (International Council of Traditional Music), and as council member of the Society of Ethnomusicology.

She is currently National Representative of the ICTM.

Shubha Chaudhuri has been a consultant for the Ford Foundation in the area of audiovisual archiving for projects in India, Indonesia and Sudan. She has been active in holding training workshops for archiving and ethnomusicology, and served as consultant with the WIPO Creative Heritage Project and with UNESCO for the cultural mapping project, and interactive museums.

As a trained facilitator of UNESCO she has been active in training workshops for the implementation of the 2003 Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention in Nepal, Bhutan and Lao PDR.