Dal parco al "progetto pastoralismo". Il canto a tenore tra patrimonializzazione e politiche dello sviluppo

Canto a tenore, sardinian pastoral songs, is one of the 90 Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity proclaimed by Unesco between 2001 and 2005. The text which describes the “masterpiece” and explains the rationale for its safeguarding sets a sharp opposition between its “traditional” and its “modern” forms: the first, an authentic version deeply rooted in a timeless pastoral setting, nowadays endangered by socio-economic change; the second, a commodified one, performed on stage for tourists. The argument of this paper is that such a sharp opposition, which mirrors common sense assumptions about globalization, conceals the real processes of contemporary tradition making and remaking, to begin with heritization. Following the history of the Pastoralism project the paper focuses on two main issues: the strong links between heritage promotion and touristic development, perceived by the local promoters themselves in the form of a continuity between Park and Pastoralism projects; the cultural logic inherent in the choice and construction of canto a tenore as an heritage “object”. The substantial overlapping between cultural objectification, heritization and touristic commodification, which the analysis points to, suggests the need of a radically different understanding of what the contemporary tradition of canto a tenore is and what its relations with socio-economic processes are.