By Kipchumba Kemei and Reuters

If a project backed by the United Nations (UN) takes off, the Maasai will join other indigenous communities that have recorded and copyrighted their native music and oral histories.

The United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) has initiated a project to help the Maasai to digitally record their native music and oral histories. The initiative could help the community use their world-renowned rich culture to generate income.

WIPO has already set aside $12,000 (Sh920,000) to be used on recording equipment, along with training.

The body did not explain the details of how it would get down to the community level to isolate viable projects, but it said it would connect the project with world music labels like Putumayo for marketing. Putumayo is a leading record label for ‘world music’.

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However, WIPO announced it was already in touch with some Maasai leaders in Kenya who have been asking for support to commercialise their culture.

The project would see age-old Maasai gems, like the traditional dance performed by jumping morans and other aspects of culture preserved unchanged, become world hits marketed on relevant channels that promote cultural music.

Songs and dances

WIPO said the project would not be limited to songs and dances but also recordings of traditional practices like the moranism rite of passage.

traditional Maasai entertainers in the Masai Mara. Photo: Courtesy

The aim of the project is to make copyrighted assets that could create new income for indigenous groups worldwide. Wend Wendland, head of the traditional knowledge division at the WIPO said the project exposed huge potential for communities to record, archive and also draw income from their cultural richness.

Under the pilot project, WIPO was to initially avail laptops, cameras and digital recorders as well as train personnel in how to conduct interviews, catalogue digital files and maintain archives. Those to undergo training to carry out the project will be Maasai technicians identified from areas where the recordings will take place.

"They (project operators) will be trained to make digital recordings of music, oral history, interviews with their elders and so on," Wendland, a South African lawyer, said.

He explained that photos and audio files can be copyrighted, and traditional, environmental and medical knowledge be patented.

While cultural expressions themselves cannot be owned, Wendland said digital recordings of them could eventually produce valuable royalties for the Maasai people who control their distribution.

The technicalities of pushing through the project will have to involve the Kenya Government due to legal issues involved.

"It gives the people some control over what is passively their property," he said.

He added: "Very often it is the recording which is misappropriated. It is the recording that ends up in an archive somewhere which eventually is accessed by a private interest as has happened in the music industry and the film industry."

The WIPO project among the Maasai is a result of a 2006 request from community leaders and local NGOs working in the community who wanted such a venture for commercial purposes.

WIPO has been contacted by indigenous communities in the Pacific and Latin America who want to replicate the Maasai recording project.

The Maasai are expected to have a first batch of digital files produced within months and will then decide what — if anything — to do with the recordings.

WIPO has said it will provide long-term support under the project and, if requested, will help the community share its cultural files online or through major commercial channels like the National Geographic.

"We have got the contacts. We can introduce them to Putumayo and Apple and we can try to link them in," Wendland said.

Innovations

Some of the recordings to take place in the Kenyan community will also include innovations by young Maasai, who have been showcasing their community’s cultural heritage in American and European cities where they pose as cultural ambassadors.

"They will be recording contemporary versions, contemporary adaptations of the underlying folklore," Wendland said.

In Narok South and Trans Mara Districts, an organisation known as Maasai Cultural Village Tourism Association has made a breakthrough in helping the community reap from tourism.

The association, co-ordinated cultural conservationist Cheryl Mvula, has organised almost 30 Maasai Culturakl villages from which locals reap direct benefits from tourists.