German Government Funds Cultural Heritage Project In Malawi
The German Embassy in Lilongwe, Malawi has committed 25,400 Euro for a cultural heritage project aimed at preserving the African nation’s music and oral traditions.
The project is entitled “Endangered Traditions – Endangered Creativity” and funding for it was provided through the German Foreign Office in Berlin under its Cultural Preservation Programme.
- Young man playing a large drum, Likoma Island, Malawi.
The project will be conducted by renowned scientist and musician Dr. Moya Malamusi, Oral Literature Research Programme in Chileka, in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Bender, Centre for World Music, University of Hildesheim, Germany.
The project will run over a period of two years.
As part of the project’s first stage (2010), Dr. Malamusi has already begun travels within Malawi in order to record the country’s rich cultural heritage in the fields of music and oral traditions.
In the project’s second stage (2011), Dr. Malamusi’s recordings will be archived at the Centre for World Music at the University of Hildesheim in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Bender, thus being preserved for future generations.
In addition, a CD and DVD will be produced. The official launch is planned for Spring 2011.
The cooperation of the German Government with the Oral Literature Research Programme and the University of Hildesheim continues and strengthens Germany and Malawi´s cooperation in the field of Cultural Heritage Preservation. Such cooperation began 10 years ago and resulted in the widely acclaimed CD production “From Lake Malawi to the Zambezi: Aspects of Music and Oral Literature in South-East Africa in the 1990s”.
The German Foreign Office has supported the preservation of cultural heritage worldwide since 1981. As of 2005, it has made available some 34.3 million Euro to more than 1,300 projects in 132 countries.
