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Macedonia, UNESCO, and Intangible Cultural Heritage: The Challenging Fate of Teskoto
Silverman, Carol. Journal of Folklore Research52.2-3 (May 2015): 233-251.


Headnote
ABSTRACT: In Macedonia debates about heritage are played out along the fault lines of ethnic and religious conflict as well as a faltering economy and threats from neighbors about interpretations of history. The country's 2002 and 2004 failed applications for a UNESCO Masterpiece of Intangible Cultural Heritage and its ongoing submissions of representative lists provide a valuable case study of how rural folklore symbols are selectively adopted into heritage discourse and elevated to iconic status. This essay analyzes Teskoto (the Heavy/Difficult Dance) as featured in two UNESCO Masterpiece applications as well as in village contexts, ensemble performances, an annual staged ritual, and tourist appropriations. The story of how Teskoto became a national symbol but failed to achieve UNESCO status as ICH illuminates the manner in which nationalist discourse shapes performance practices.

Location: Macedonia

Macedonia, or more properly the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), is a new Balkan state, independent since 1991 (figure 1). Although Macedonia avoided the direct Yugoslav warfare of the 1990s, it has suffered economically due to regional crises and several embargoes imposed by Greece. FYROM and Greece are currently engaged in a legal and pol itical battle over the name Macedonia, which is also the name of a province of Greece. Greece has refused to let F Y ROM use the name, claiming it has an exclusive tie to ancient Macedonia, ruled by Alexander the Great. Macedonia has countered with its own proofs of antiquity, as embodied in archeological sites and revisionist histories. This battle has been very damaging to Macedonia's development agenda and has also encouraged nationalist fervor. One manifestation of this fervor is Skopje 2104, an urban development project in the capital consisting of twenty new buildings and more than forty new monuments to historical figures; the cost is over five hundred million euros. The project's centerpiece is an eightyfoot statue/fountain of Alexander the Great on his horse (figure 2).

Incipient Macedonian nationalism, of course, began long before the name dispute with Greece. Historical narratives have centered around the fight for liberation from the Ottoman Empire that ruled Macedonia for five hundred years, until 1912 (Brown 2003; Neofotistos 2012). Byzantine civilization, the Eastern Orthodox religion, and village folklore have been glorified as bulwarks of ethnicity against Muslim invaders. The Turks are oft en depicted as tyrannical overlords, as "the Turkish Yoke," although Western historians paint a more nuanced picture (Hupchick 1994); many Macedonians view the Muslim religion as somehow foreign, even though up to 35 percent of the country is Muslim. The bloody Balkan Wars (1912-13) followed Macedonia's liberation from the Ottoman Empire, in which Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece fought over control of Macedonia. Macedonia has thus had a conflictive relationship not only with Greece and Serbia but also with Bulgaria, and many Bulgarians claim there is no such thing as a separate Macedonian ethnicity.

A fter the victory of the Partisans/socialists in World War II, the Yugoslav government promoted the institutionalization of Macedonian identity and declared Macedonia a constituent "nation" (narod); its language was standardized, its history was codified, and its folklore became a central concern of cultural and arts policy. The government valorized ethnic Macedonian folklore, not the folklore of minorities (Seeman 2012). According to Marxist and Leninist principles, pro - moting art and nation building were entwined: the modernization of society required the creation of new cultural forms such as folk music and dance ensembles. In addition, the government supported KUDs (Kulturno Umetnicko Drustvo)-voluntary organizations of amateur folk artists (Hofman 2008).

In 1949 Tanec, the Macedonian State Ensemble of Folk Dances and Songs, was founded, and folklore collection and preservation efforts escalated. Tanec has been called a "museum in motion," a "three-dimensional presentation of a knowledge long lost" (Tatarchevska 2011, 78). In an insightful article, Macedonian folklorist Ivona Opetcheska Tatarchevska (2011, 79) explicates how folk dance was ideologically tied to nationalism; dance was seen as the "keeper" of "national history." She cites Manoil Cuckov, the first director of Tanec, who wrote that Macedonian folk dances are "the carriers of the new historical contents and a reflection of the socio-political elements of the whole nation"; he further linked dance with national struggle (80). In a sense, Cuckov advocated that dance should provide a historical narrative.

Nation building entered a new phase after Macedonia gained independence in 1991, with ethnic politics taking center stage. According to the most recent Macedonian census (2002), the ethnic populations of Macedonia include Macedonians (64.2 percent of the population), Albanians (25.2 percent), Turks (3.9 percent), and Roma (2.7 percent); some Muslims claim they make up as much as 35 percent of the population.1 The main conflict that dominates contemporary Macedonian politics is over minority rights: Macedonians fear Albanian secession, Muslim fanaticism, and the loss of Macedonian national identity, and Albanians fear Macedonian suppression of their rights (Neofotistos 2012). The conflict has turned violent several times but is now simmering. In sum, Macedonian ethnic identity is hist orically fragile; a sense of being besieged externally by neighbors and internally by minorities informs nationalist discourse. Heritage policy is directly affected by this framework.

ICH Element: Teskoto

How did Teskoto become a national ethnic symbol and a proposed ICH element for UNESCO? Teskoto is a men's dance that was performed in the western Macedonian mountainous region of Reka, in the villages of Galicnik, Lazaropolje, and Gari, among others. The inhabitants of this region, who speak a distinct dialect of Macedonian, are known as Mijaks. The majority are Eastern Orthodox; however there were and still are Torbesi (Macedonian-speaking Muslims) who dance Teskoto. Mijaks and Torbesi engaged in agriculture and herding, like other Macedonian villagers, but the males were especially known for their seasonal migratory patterns that took them to Ottoman territories and Europe to find work as stonemasons and other artisans.

Teskoto is a ver y striking line dance in which the leader displays improvisatory skills. It begins with a dramatic, slow, and nonmetric section where the dancers execute precise lifts, steps, and leaps. The musicians must expertly follow the leader, picking up on visual embodied cues. The music builds in tempo, ending in a fast 2/4 section. The pioneering dance researchers Ljubica and Danica Jankovic' (1934) published a description from Lazaropolje that emphasized the leader's improvisation and squats and turns. In the 1980s Balkan dance ethnographer Elsie Dunin interviewed elderly dancers from the region who stressed: "The dance depended on the leader who was critically judged for his improvisational skill . . . that took great strength and coordination to perform. In Lazaropolje, a dance leader paid for the privilege of leading the dance and he would not relinquish his leadership" (Visinski and Dunin 1995, 263).

Traditionally, Albanian-speaking Muslim Roma (Gypsies) from the city of Debar, near the Albanian border, perform the music that accompanies Teskoto. Roma in Macedonia have very low status in every economic, political, and social niche except music, where they are valued.2 The Majovci clan of Roma from Debar have performed for Mijak villagers in a patron-client relationship for centuries. The instruments used are zurla (a double reed pipe, played in pairs, melody and drone) and tapan (a two-headed drum); until recently, Roma had a monopoly on these loud outdoor instruments. Romani professional performers intimately know the entire regional dance repertoire.

Teskoto became a signature dance of Tanec soon after the ensemble was formed. Dunin reports that in the 1940s several dancers from Lazaropolje moved to Skopje and joined the Koco Racin amateur ensemble and other groups. Many Koco Racin dancers were accepted into Tanec; in addition, the first dance director of Tanec, Rafe Zikoski, was from Lazaropolje (Visinski and Dunin 1995, 263).3 Thus, the Lazaropolje connection helped cement Teskoto's role in Tanec.

The traditional contexts for dancing Teskoto are not mentioned by researchers, which leads me to assume that it had no special ritual meaning but was part of the men's dance repertoire for typical village celebrations such as weddings, saints' days, and gatherings after church. Ideologically, however, the dance was endowed with nationalist sentiment during the crucial postwar identity-building period. Tatarchevska (2011, 82) traces the relationship of Teskoto to public narratives via a 1951 article by Cuckov, the first director of Tanec, in which he

promoted the prototype of the ideal-typic Macedonian dance. In fact, having the Mijak Teskoto dance in mind, Cuckov, without even mentioning the dance in question, described an imaginary "glorious Macedonian dance." Mystifying the tempo rubato of the dance . . . Cuckov gives it epic proportions . . . and promoted it as a symbol of the struggles for the national liberation of the Macedonian people. Manoil Cuckov thus not only promoted, but also institutionalized the Teskoto as a prototype of a Macedonian dance. The Teskoto has been the undisputed "master" of the Macedonian folk dance scene for over sixty years.

Cuckov emphasized the slow beginning of the dance to signify the gravity of oppression, and the fast ending to signify victory (Wilson 2014). The website of the Ministry of Culture states:

The Hard One (Teskoto) is considered to be one of the most beautiful and most difficult Macedonian folk dances. . . . In essence, it is devoted to the farewell moments of the Macedonians who were leaving their country to work abroad. . . . However, over time it developed in a hymn not only of the people who worked abroad, but also of sufferings that piled up in the Macedonian souls through the centuries of subjugation.4

The connection between Teskoto and historical struggle was further bolstered by Blaze Koneski's 1948 poem, titled "Teskoto." Koneski was a major figure in language standardization, and his poem is still taught in Macedonian elementary schools. The poem invokes national liberation against enslavement (implied to be Turkish) via dance.5

As Teskoto became a showpiece for Tanec, several dramatic elements were introduced. Like other Balkan ensembles striving to "modernize" their folklore, Tanec took as its model the USSR's Moiseyev Ensemble, which was a folk ballet (Visinski and Dunin 1995, 8). When Tanec competed in the 1950 Llangollen Festival in Wales, where it won first prize, Teskoto was no longer led by one dancer. Rather, leadership passed from one dancer to another in the fast section, adding a frenzied finale; in addition, all dancers started doing turns and deep knee bends. These changes were introduced in the 1930s by Lazaropolje dancers who had moved to Belgrade (263). The most dramatic element, and the pose that has become iconic, is the leader climbing on top of the drum, with one leg raised (figure 3). This pose was refined for the 1950 Llangollen Festival.6

Dunin notes that "the version of Teskoto performed . . . in 1950 . . . has been consistently performed for almost forty years"; no other dance performed by Tanec has remained so stable (Visinski and Dunin 1995, 263). Since 1948, Tanec has also been generously supported by the government; has consistently employed a large cadre of staff, performers, and musicians; has toured the world in over 4,500 concerts; and has received major national and city awards (Tatarchevska 2011, 85; see also http://www.tanec.com.mk).

Current Status with Regard to UNESCO: No Status

Macedonia failed twice to attain UNESCO Masterpiece status for Teskoto, and currently it is not on Macedonia's National Registr y of Cultural Heritage, the internal representative list supervised by the Ministry of Culture. Macedonia legally ratified the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2006 and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in 2007. Since 2005 the Institute of Folklore and the Institute of Macedonian Language have been in charge of preparing ICH documents; before 2005 various organizations and folklore ensembles prepared applications. According to the Ministry of Culture, the stated goals of ICH work are preservation and tourism. Macedonia currently has sixty-eight ICH elements on its Registry, consisting of thirty-nine folk creations (such as harvest singing), nineteen dialects of Macedonian language, and ten dialects of minority languages (Tatarchevska 2010). In 2013, one of these elements, the Feast of the Holy Forty Martyrs in Stip, was inscribed on the UNESCO ICH Representative List, followed by Kopacka, a dance from the village of Dramce, Pijanec, in 2014

On-the-Ground Perspectives: ICH Status Failures

The first Macedonian attempt to engage with UNESCO occurred in 2002 when it applied for Masterpiece status for the wedding ritual in the village of Galicnik.7 Teskoto was a central element of the application. UNESCO approved 15,000 US dollars for the preparation of the application by the Macedonian Folklore Ensembles Association (SOFAM). Although the entire wedding is too complicated to describe here, up until the 1940s the families of returning migrant workers frequently held weddings culminating on Petrovden (Saint Peter's Day), July 12. Up to fifty weddings took place simultaneously.

Galicnik was historically the largest and most prosperous of the twenty-f our Mijak villages. Weddings there were up to eight days long, with elaborate rituals to ensure fertility and prosperity, heavily embroidered handwoven costumes, elaborate gift-giving, feasting, story-telling, and traditional vocal and instrumental music and dance, including Teskoto. Galicnik wedding customs precisely fit UNESCO's definition of ICH (Klickova and Georgieva [1951] 1996).8 However, the actual inhabitants of Galicnik, the grassroots connection, were missing.

In the late nineteenth century Galicnik had three thousand inhabitants, but during the twentieth century the population declined due to urbanization and migration. A fter World War II and the socialization of private land, the village lost its economic base; the last wedding was held in 1953, and by the 1960s only a few elderly residents remained. Today some descendants return to family homes during the summer. In 1963, a few former residents set about reviving the wedding ritual as a staged re-creation for Macedonian as well as foreign tourists. A five-hundred-seat stone amphitheater was constructed, and amateur ensembles became involved in the performance. The Galicnik Wedding has become an annual event held on the weekend closest to July 12; it is enacted in a two-day condensed version by members of the Skopje-based Koco Racin dance ensemble plus several former villagers who formed an association. Currently thousands of people attend, and competitive applications are taken from couples with heritage from Galicnik who want to be married during the ritual. The event is covered by the media and heavily promoted by the Ministry of Tourism. Political speeches, a song contest, and anniversary celebrations have been added.

The 2002 UNESCO application was submitted by the Union of Macedonian Folklore Ensembles, whose stated aim was "to preserve, protect, support and present Macedonian folklore which reflects . . . the heritage and traditions of the Macedonian people and the nationalities who live in the Republic of Macedonia." The submitted list of "custodians of the know how," was dominated by ensemble leaders and folklorists, not villagers (UNESCO 2001, 13). The application consisted of florid language lauding the Galicnik wedding as "a masterpiece of human creative genius" embodying authentic folklore and national heritage. Teskoto was labeled "the Dance of Defiance"; the Ministry described Teskoto as "a symbol of the insubordination of Macedonians" (this refers to the defeat of Ottoman Turks). Referencing the organic tropes of romantic nationalism, the application stated that the wedding embodies the soul of the nation that finds expression in rural folklore. All this is quite paradoxical considering that the wedding is a re-creation.

How far the wedding has changed from its "natural" context and whether that disqualifies it from UNESCO's definition of ICH is part of a wider conversation about authenticity and purity. I agree with folklorists who claim that change signals a healthy folklore environment; however, not all changes are equivalent. Catherine Grant (2012, 38) writes that "Music tourism and 'festivalisation' are examples of how ideological acceptance of change in a tradition might manifest within the context of initiatives to strengthen a genre's vitality, and scholars now acknowledge that these phenomena deserve consideration well beyond any dogmatic dismissal that they (re)present a less 'authentic' tradition, and therefore one of lesser value." The Galicnik wedding, however, has not merely been "festivalized" for tourists-its locals are merely part-time residents.

Another issue to consider is ethnicity: although Galicnik is an Eastern Orthodox Slavic-speaking Macedonian village, all the musicians who provided music for the weeklong ritual were Muslim Roma from the nearby city of Debar.9 These professional performers, traditionally from the Majovci clan, intimately knew the native dance repertoire and signaled every important ritual moment with appropriate melo - dies. There is even an adage that says "no wedding will take place in Galicnik unless the Majovci family plays." Thus Roma were not only integrated into the Galicnik wedding, but the villagers were dependent upon them for the oldest layer of their ritual, dance, and processional music. Despite these facts, however, the UNESCO application hardly mentioned Roma and nowhere mentioned them in relation to the goals of affirming cultural identity and preserving traditions. Roma were merely described in a few sentences as musicians.10

Heritage is assumed to be coterminous with bounded territorial groups-so-called folk communities (Noyes 2006)-and Roma have usually been excluded from the category folk (Silverman 2012, 2014). On the one hand, only nation-states can submit UNESCO applications; thus UNESCO empowers states, and states respond with "heritage strategies."11 Moreover, the "masterpieces of humanity" designation and even the newer post-2008 "representative list designation" elide into the "nation," which must choose some aspects of its culture as "masterpieces" or "representative" and reject other aspects. Needless to say, minority culture can be problematic here. On the other hand, UNESCO specifically advocates for the "preservation of cultural diversity" and the "tolerance and harmonious interaction between cultures" (UNESCO 2001), so one might expect cultural communication between ethnic groups to have surfaced in the application, but this was not the case. The great potential for recognizing and promoting cultural exchange between Roma and Macedonians was ignored.

Similarly, Roma were omitted from the section on training the next generation in folk practices. In fact, the zurla and tapan players at re-created Galicnik weddings for the most part have not been from the local Majovci clan but rather have been Roma from the capital city of Skopje who are employed by dance ensembles. They play in a different style and do not know the full regional repertoire. However, in 2011 and 2014 the Majovci performed (Dave Wilson, pers. comm.). As the Majovci negotiate precarious professional performance op - portunities, they need support in training the next generation, which ICH recognition could aid. The Majovci are still respected musicians in the region, are still training their sons, and are still hired for some local celebrations, despite the challenge of a decreasing number of patrons; in 2005 a compact disc of their music was released by the Mister Company, with the dual-language title Zurli I Tapani na Galicka Svadba, Majovci / Wedding in Galicnik, Macedonian Wedding Music with Pipes and Drums. Ironically, while the living traditions of Roma (zurla and tapan performance) are in danger of being excluded or minimized, in the 2002 UNESCO application, the folklore of the majority Macedonians was coded as authentic, even though it was staged.

A fter the 2002 application was rejected by UNESCO, a second application for Masterpiece status was submitted in 2004. It specifically focused on Teskoto and was prepared by Tanec. According to Tatarchevska, it was written "not with a scientific approach but instead in a populist manner, full of emotions by the former dancers."12 The application focused on nationalist sentiment and described the staged version of the dance that had become iconic, not the traditional dance. No folklorists were involved in the preparation. This application was also rejected by UNESCO. A fter these rejections, many cultural workers realized that ICH documents should be written by folklorists, and soon after Macedonia's ICH policy shifted to the Institute of Folklore and the Ministry of Culture. In 2008, UNESCO replaced the Masterpiece process with the Representative List in order to be more inclusive. However, Teskoto is not on Macedonia's Registr y and there are no plans for including it.

I suggest that past applications for Teskoto (and inclusion on the Registry) could have possibly been successful if the wider dynamic, living, grassroots, and multiethnic framework of the dance had been considered. Teskoto is not an isolated dance but is part of a genre of dances called Teski Ora (difficult or heavy dances) found all over Macedonia, as opposed to Lesni Ora (easy or light dances). This category would have been too broad for UNESCO ICH status because it includes hundreds of dances. However, if we examine the structure of the specific Teskoto of western Macedonian Mijaks, we see that it is closely related to some dances of the minority ethnic group known as Torbesi (Muslim Mijaks). In fact, according to Tatarchevska, the ver y same traditional Teskoto continued to be danced until recently among Torbesi who still lived in western Macedonian villages.13 However, because Torbesi live in villages that are less well known than Galicnik and Lazaropolje and because they are a Muslim minority, government officials paid no attention to them. This group could have been the missing "grassroots" component required for a successful UNESCO application. Tatarchevska also pointed out that as these Torbesi began to be exposed to the iconic version of Teskoto as performed by Tanec, they too adopted the standard form, "the Tanec recipe." It seems to me that the potential of recognizing and preser ving the dance in its Mijak village context has been lost.

On the other hand, if one grants that this specific Teskoto is part of a subgenre marked by a slow nonmetric section followed by a fast metered section, one can still find these types of dances performed by Albanians and Torbesi in Skopje.14 However, again, the fact that performers are Muslims problematizes national attention to their dance repertoire. In addition, this dance structure is not unique to Macedonia; it is also found in the province of northern Greece called Macedonia and in Kosovo and Albania. Thus it would be hard for F Y ROM to claim this dance form as uniquely its own. Many UNESCO elements have faced similar problems of cross-border claims; in response, there are several multi-Balkan nation applications in preparation. In sum, there is little chance now for Teskoto to appear on any representative list. It now has a vibrant existence in Macedonia as a staged dance, but in ethnic Macedonian village contexts it has died out.

Discussion: Tourism, Branding, and Ethnic Politics

All these UNESCO initiatives need to be understood in the context of the current postsocialist economic crisis, in which the possibility of increased tourism to Macedonia is seen as urgent. Tourism is heavily promoted by the Ministry of Culture, and folklore has become a good advertisement for the new country. Folk dance and music are crucial to tourism, and Teskoto is a central icon. "Today Teskoto is found in practically all tourist guidebooks, encyclopedias from former Yugoslavia, in all campaigns for cultural and village tourism, or for any kind of promotion of the country" (Tatarchevska 2011, 84). In fact, a statue of the iconic Teskoto pose of the lead dancer standing on the drum is found in downtown Skopje (figure 4). Since independence, the tourism industry has embraced branding and, in the process, has recruited the tropes of Macedonian nation building, celebrating the Byzantine past, and preserving present-day rural folklore; here music, dance, and imagery play pivotal roles.

For example, a series of alluring television advertisements has been broadcast recently on European channels. Titled Macedonia Timeless and commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and the state tourist agency, the advertisements brand the nation's culture as simultaneously ancient and modern through imagery and music. One, directed by noted filmmaker Milco Mancevski, hints at Macedonian folk music through snippets of 7/8 melodies, the strumming of strings, images of a men's line dance with a tapan player, and a zurla player who pops up in a children's book.15 But the music is mostly Western symphonic with the suggested beat of a tapan. Even though zurla and tapan are traditional Romani instruments, there are no Roma in this clip; the tapan player is blond. Additionally, neither Albanians nor other minorities nor any Muslim images appear in this advertisement. In fact, the zurla appears for only a few seconds in an image of a Western ensemble with a cello and Western timpani. Most of the imagery in the clip depicts ancient and Eastern Orthodox themes, upholding Macedonia's claim to antiquity.

A second Macedonia Timeless clip begins with a Galicnik wedding.16 The video opens with a ritual scene from the wedding that has become iconic: the bride looking through a ring. The traditional ritual is that the groom goes to the door of the bride's home, and she looks through a ring and says, "I see you through this ring, so that I may enter into your heart." In the clip, there is a brief shot of zurla and tapan players, and we hear zurla music in 9/8. However, again, no Roma are pictured. In both these videos, folklore and folk music serve as a bridge between the ancient and the modern, but both present a monoethnic Macedonia in which elements of ethnic and religious minorities are minimized.

Currently, neither internal nor UNESCO ICH designations are really "needed" to brand Teskoto as a national treasure; it is already branded, and it serves as an emotional symbol for Macedonians (Wilson 2014). On the other hand, other forms of local folklore do need ICH designation because they are deemed "old-fashioned" or "endangered" or regionally iconic. For example, Kopacka (the digging dance), a striking and difficult line dance from eastern Macedonia that emphasizes small, fast, and sharp steps, is well known in its region and is performed by Tanec. But in 2012 I was surprised to hear villagers from Dramce announce that it was "certified" by UNESCO. They wanted to convince the audience that if UNESCO valued Kopacka, then we all should. They were clearly proud; they are striving to preserve the dance among young people and to expand performance possibilities. Both endeavors have been partially successful. Indeed, Kopacka was inscribed on Macedonia's Registry in December 2013 and UNESCO's Representative List in 2014.17

Dramce villagers employ the discourse of UNESCO in part because they have been trained to present Kopacka to outsiders by ICH workers both from their village association and from the Ministr y of Culture; they have also learned to objectify and label their dance and to verbally express pride in their heritage. Most Macedonians, on the other hand, are ignorant about ICH initiatives, although they realize that folklore can stimulate tourism. Roma are perhaps even more ignorant about ICH, due to their marginalization. They are more interested in securing paid work and in avoiding prejudice than in achieving ICH status. Due to centuries of discrimination, Roma tend to be practical, and they realize that although they were indispensable as musicians for unstaged celebrations, they have been ignored in national brand- ing endeavors. In addition, Roma are starting to be replaced in their traditional musical professional roles. In the future, as ICH initiatives become more widespread, Roma might be more sav v y about claiming their rightful place in Macedonian folklore.

Comparing the 2002 Galicnik wedding application and the 2012 Kopacka application, I note that the latter shies away from romanticism and explains the dance in its living dynamic context. Unlike in Galicnik, in Dramce villagers of all ages and both es are involved on a grassroots level in preservation activities, and the dance is part of living village heritage. However, in both applications the role of Roma is minimized. As in Galicnik, in Dramce, Romani tapan players pro - vide the traditional music for Kopacka (it is danced solely to several tapans, and the Semka clan are the most famous Romani drummers). The application states: "There is cooperation between Macedonians and Roma in the region specially in the performance of the dance. . . . Inscription can strengthen the intercultural connection between the musicians (predominantly ethnic Roma) and the dancers of Macedonian nationality" (UNESCO 2012). However, no ethnographic information about Roma is provided in the ten-page document. Similarly, in booklets produced by the Kopacka association in Dramce, neither the text nor the photographs highlight Roma. Thus, exclusions regarding Roma persist; however, grassroots activism around Kopacka contrasts with the lack of a living village Teskoto tradition. It is not surprising then, that Teskoto's fate has been totally different from Kopacka's.

Kopacka remains a dance known mostly in its region, despite its UNESCO designation. In contrast, Teskoto has emerged as a national treasure despite UNESCO application failures due to its branding as a traditional and iconic men's dance. Macedonians instantly claim Teskoto as theirs, and it lives on in images and stage performances. It also appears as a "pose" in a dramatic moment in urban Macedonian weddings. In urban weddings in the capital Skopje, folk musicians are often hired for a short show while the regular wedding band (that plays urban folk and popular music on synthesized instruments) takes a break. These folk musicians play acoustic instruments such as zurla and tapan, and at an emotional moment they encourage the groom (or another honored male guest) to climb up on the tapan in the "Teskoto pose." Teskoto has thus become a living symbol of Macedonian village folklore, defiance, and male bonding that is enacted by urban middle-class Macedonians to remind them of their roots; it might even become an urban ritual. The hired musicians for these weddings are not Roma but ethnic Macedonian ensemble musicians. The dance is impossible without zurla and tapan, but Roma are easily replaceable.

Cultural heritage projects are active sites for reinscribing and revising narratives about Macedonia's past, present, and future. Through its connection with traditional village life, ritual, male strength, and nationalist resistance, Teskoto has been elevated to an icon. However, its grassroots connection has been compromised in part because of the role of Tanec in the process of standardization. Ironically, icons require standardization for easy recognition and branding, but this works against the dynamism of living folklore. Two UNESCO applications failed due to their focus on staged folklore, but the potential for viewing Teskoto as ICH might have been realized if ethnic politics permitted it. Today, Teskoto is more a national symbol than a village reality.

University of Oregon

Eugene

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Macedonian dance ethnologist Ivona Opetcheska Tatarchevska for sharing her vast knowledge and insights; Jane Sugarman also provided valuable feedback. The interpretations and opinions expressed are solely the author's. Research was done on numerous trips to Macedonia between 1971 and 2012 (some trips were supported by the University of Oregon and the Guggenheim Foundation) and via Internet resources. Several paragraphs were reworked from Silverman 2012 with permission of the publisher.

Footnote
Notes

1. See the website for Macedonia's state statistical office at http://www.stat.gov .mk/OblastOpsto_en.aspx?id=31.

2. Roma face extreme discrimination in housing, employment, schooling, health care, and other public services (Silverman 2012).

3. A film from 1948 titled Jugoslovenski Narodni Plesovi shows Zikoski leading Teskoto before it became standardized. Another of the dancers in the film is Dojcin Matevski, also from Lazaropolje, who led Teskoto in Tanec for several decades.

4. See http://www.soros.org.mk/konkurs/076/angver/Teskoto.html.

5. The poem begins:

O Teskoto! As soon as the zurli start playing wildly

As soon as the tapani thunder with an underground echo

Why is a hot sadness burning in my chest

Why is a river pouring into my eyes

Why do I feel like crying like a child

Bending my hands and covering my face

Biting my lips and squeezing my cursed heart

Not to shout.

6. Dunin further elaborates that in Mijak village contexts the drum was too large and thin to bear the weight of a dancer, but in Skopje drums are smaller and thicker. The pose was based on "the recollection . . . that the leader had complete control of the dance and the accompanying musicians. . . . The leader could climb on top of the musicians as they played for him in a bent down position" (Visinski and Dunin 1995, 263). This indicates the embodied subordinate "client" relationship of Roma to their patrons.

7. I would like to thank Mark Lev y, who was a reviewer of the 2002 Macedonian UNESCO application, for sharing it with me along with his insights and evaluations.

8. For a 1955 documentary film on the Galicnik wedding, see Galicka Svadba (Galicnik wedding), directed by Aco Petrovski. Another documentary was made in 2009, titled Galicka Svadba 2009. These films were sponsored and funded by the Macedonian government.

9. These Roma are Albanian-speaking and refer to themselves as Egjupci (Egyptians). Historically they were Roma who moved up the social scale by adopting the Albanian language and distancing themselves from the stigmatized Roma label.

10. The descriptive part of the application is based on Vera Klickova's 1951 study, which minimizes the role of Roma.

11. William Logan (2007, 48) states that "national interests continue to loom large in human rights, cultural rights, and cultural heritage issues. . . . National governments place enormous importance on UNESCO listings. . . . Their interest is multi-faceted and includes the economic benefits of tourism but particularly the international status." The "heritage strategies" employed by various states are explored in a recent volume (Bendix, Eggert, and Peselmann 2012).

12. Interview with the author, April 10, 2012.

13. Inter view with the author, April 10, 2012.

14. Ethnomusicologist Jane Sugarman and historian Eran Fraenkel filmed these types of dances done by Albanian men in Skopje between 1980 and 1982. In a recent personal communication, Sugarman stated that she located YouTube videos of this community still doing these dances; see http://www.youtube.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu /watch?v=uEm6p6tg85k and http://www.youtube.com.proxy.lib ... atch?v=99IukX0ZNmQ. Some community members moved to Turkey in the 1950s and 1960s and still perform these dances in Turkey. See http://www.youtube.com.proxy.lib ... watch?v=KJHyJENN8Sc and http://www.youtube.com.proxy.lib ... atch?v=UqnKlHrsRwk.

15. See http://www.youtube.com.proxy.lib ... atch?v=PtYrDVqr7IQ.

16. See http://macedonia-timeless.com/videos.

17. See http://www.unesco.org.proxy.lib. ... lture/ich/RL/00995.

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AuthorAffiliation
Carol Silverman, Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Folklore, has done research for over twenty-five years in the Balkans and with Balkan Roma in several diasporic sites. She explores politics, music, human rights, gender, and state policy with a focus on representation. Her 2012 book Romani Routes: Cultural Politics and Balkan Music in Diaspora won the Merriam Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicolog y. (csilverm@uoregon.edu)