Festum Patrimonium: Between the Festivalisation of Traditional Music Heritage and the Heritagisation of Traditional Music Festivals

The chapter is an attempt to analyse the phenomenon of broadly understood music heritage festivals from two main perspectives: the heterodox theory of heritage and the interdisciplinary critical heritage studies, as well as performance and interdisciplinary festival studies. The titular tension between festivalisation of heritage and heritagisation of festivals will be shown on the examples of different kinds of contemporary festivals based on traditional music that take place in Poland. A cross-section of the most representative examples in these events diverse categories will be presented and analysed. Among the festivals considered here there are those belonging to the following genres: folkloristic, folk, ethno, regional, minority, intercultural, neofolk, ethno-fusions, and those focusing on broadly understood intangible heritage. Apart from outlining the general panorama of such events in Poland, the article also aims at showing how music festivals are not only occasions for celebrating cultural heritage, but themselves become its significant part.