An idea remains an idea until it is put into practice. And only then, when it leaves the page or imagination and takes on real thickness, do we finally get to know it and understand its identity. Imaterial was born following the attribution of Intangible Heritage of Humanity status by UNESCO to Cante alentejano, the major musical expression of the Alentejo region; and from the will to promote dialogue between this music that sounds like the voice of the land worked from sunrise to sunset, and so many others that, in different geographies, embody local traditions. We already knew this: this Festival would reinforce the certainty that borders (political, geographical, cultural) are nothing but imaginary lines. And that differences, whenever they exist, should be a reason for enchantment, not for mistrust.
What we only suspected was how much Évora, whose historical center is a World Heritage Site, would provide the perfect scale for the meetings made possible by the Imaterial - music as a collective sharing, stories as narratives that come out of the songs and extend beyond the stages, singing as an extension of the dining table, the streets as natural places for music to be heard and to mingle with the city sounds. A scale that allows for proximity between musicians and audience, a scale that reminds us how tradition, as a transmission phenomenon, reinvented in the Imaterial through personal views of what it can mean today, cannot be made up of a museological or sacred matter.
Tradition, in Festival Imaterial, is conjugated both in the present and in the future. It is discussed and claimed so that it is kept alive and active. So that everything we carry as heritage might lead us to new ways of thinking as a collective. Because there are no thoughts without listening.