The performers enthralled the audience including the representatives of UNESCO with devotional Sufi dance movements compelling them to join with the dancers and get a taste of traditional form of folk dance and music.

Attiring traditional costumes with conventional jewellery style, the performing arts group captured the true essence of Sufi legacies in a pure devitional way.

Workshop on `Safeguarding Intangible Heritage' was recently held at Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) for the officials of UNESCO, PNCA and Lok Virsa to understand the convention of UNESCO, data collection and inventorying of Intangible Cultural Heritage and use of Geographic Information System in mapping of intangible cultural heritage.

Pakistan being the melting part of many civilizations has tremendously rich culture and traditions. The diverse climatic and geographic conditions have further enriched and magnified the culture of this region and it is very important to protect and safeguard both the tangible and intangible culture of Pakistan.

Pakistan has a rich cultural heritage and it is very important to safeguard both the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of Pakistan and link culture with economic development, said the participants.

According to experts, Folk music is one of the most confused phrases in the history of music. Despite emergence of an enormous body of literature on folk music, there is no certain definition of what folk music is.

In the simplest term, folk music is defined to be typical of a nation or ethnic group, known to all segments of its society, and preserved usually by oral traditions. A brief story of academic exploration of the contents of folk music indicates that all discussions tend to identify certain characteristics of folk music but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms.

The most common characteristic of folk music, which emerges from this discourse, is the collective ownership of melodic composition and text of song resting with people of an ethnic group, a region, or a nation, they said.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011