Cultural practices and heritage processes: the action of cultural policies and jongo southeast as a possible case study

Abstract

The instruments of safeguard of immaterial heritage in Brazil date from the year 2000. They have played a fundamental role in the displacement of discussions about the signification and re-significations of traditional cultural manifestations. In the case of the southeastern region of the country, important cultural practices like the jongo have almost disappeared or been considered as folklore. Very often seen by the young as something of the past, as an old fashioned cultural activity or simply as something belonging to the old members of the community, these practices have recovered, along the last decade, an important role inside (and even outside) the remaining quilombola communities. This process has been partially facilitated by the cultural policies implemented since 2002. This article aims at discussing the role and the contribution of some of these cultural policies put to effect in the last decade, having as its main field of observation that of the traditional popular cultures and having as a starting point studies of several researchers of the jongo in the southeast of Brazil, from a historical reflection that locates in the 1930s the rise of state actions in the field of immaterial heritage.