What is it with Italians and UNESCO? I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about things Italian. I speak the language fluently, my kids have citizenship, I can talk about politics there - but I never quite grokked this fascination with getting everything declared UNESCO this, UNESCO that.
Basically, your "thing" (a style of song, a method of making cheese") gets a stamp and then people cannot mess with it.
As a "consumer", I get some form of quality assurance that the UNSECO site will be well maintained, that my Parmigiano Reggiano is not some cheap knock off.
It's a bit like someone with a RHCSA certification, or an MFI certified Apple accessory.
In US it probably is[1] as US does not recognize European PDOs on food. You can sell Sammarzano tomatoes without the tomatoes even coming from Italy.
This is all political and has roots in the Boeing-Airbus trade dispute.
But with things like this kind of singing, what does it really achieve? Do the singers get money to teach it to the next generation or something?
When I still lived in Padova, a friend wanted me to translate an application for... I think it was "open source software" to be declared some kind of UNESCo thing, and while I am normally pretty generous with my time, I was just like "open source needs people to work on it, not some kind of UNESCO designation".
Then there's the fact that UNESCO sites receive funding, which Italians love.
Then Italians are (overly?) proud of their history and food and they won't pass up an opportunity to tell the world they're the best. [1]
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp2uDyzxP6ghttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_UNESCO_Intang...
The interesting parts are the non-parties, such as the British Empire, joined by Russia, the United States, Somalia, et. al.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Heritage_Sites_i...
Indicates that Italy has the most (58) World Heritage Sites, above China (56), so considering landmass, I suppose that's a lot.
But apart from the marketing, Italy really has a lot of stuff worth protecting.
Seems fair as a country to say "How can we maximally utilize our cultural resources?"
If the UN provides a vehicle with which to do that, they use the vehicle. Gripe about the game, not the good player.