An urgent global initiative to document and make accessible endangered oral literatures before they disappear without record

For many communities around the world, the transmission of oral literature from one generation to the next lies at the heart of cultural practice. Performances of these creative works - which include ritual texts, curative chants, epic poems, musical genres, folk tales, creation tales, songs, myths, legends, word games, life histories or historical narratives - are increasingly endangered. Globalisation and rapid socio-economic change exert complex pressures on smaller communities, often eroding expressive diversity and transforming culture through assimilation to more dominant ways of life. As vehicles for the transmission of unique cultural knowledge, local languages encode oral traditions that become threatened when elders die and livelihoods are disrupted. Of the world's over 6,000 living languages, around half will cease to be used as spoken vernaculars by the end of this century.