Mohács to nominate the busójárás for world heritage status

The southern Hungarian town of Mohács will nominate its folk tradition, the carnival celebration called busójárás, to be included in UNESCO's intellectual cultural world heritage list, which will be compiled for the first time next year.

The busójárás is celebrated in Mohács every February by wearing scary masks and parading down the streets making lots of noise in the process, either to scare away the Turks - according to one explanation of the tradition - or the winter.

The assistant director of the European Folklore Institute, Eszter Csonka-Takács said that Mohács has a good chance at making the national list, which will contain two or three nominees, and then the UNESCO list.

UNESCO will compile a list in order to protect the world's intellectual cultural heritage for the first time next year, writes hirextra.hu, based on a report in regional daily Új Dunántúli Napló. The aim of publishing the list is to make these valuable traditions better known. There is no immediate benefit from making the list, but it potentially has great advertising value.

If Mohács is included in the list, not only the busójárás but also related traditions would become protected as well, such as the dances and making bocskor (traditional Hungarian footwear) and busó masks.

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