P’ansori is a story-singing art emergent from indigenous folk and ritual narrative singing styles of the Southwestern provinces. Accompanied on a barrel-shaped drum (puk), the singer alternates between spoken passages (aniri) and sung passages (sori). In singing, the poetic aspect of storytelling is amplified to signal the transition from recited to sung passages. The singer employs several distinct rhythmic cycles (changdan) that respond to the changing mood or context of storytelling: the slow 6-beat chinyang, medium 12-beat chungmori, faster 12-beat chungjungmori, syncopated 4-beat chajinmori, urgent duple hwimori, and the 10-beat ônmori exuding the feeling of asymmetry in its 2-3-2-3 sequence. Five of the narratives have been canonized, and they are: Ch’unhyangga (Song of the chaste wife Ch’unhyang), Shim Ch’ôngga (Song of the filial daughter Shim Ch’ông), Hûngboga (Song of the good brother Hûngbo), Sugungga (Song of the Underwater Palace), and Chôkpyôkka (Song of the Red Cliff). In 2003, p’ansori became designated by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible World Heritage of Humanity. The question singers, preservationists and researchers of p’ansori ask today is how this art form can be a meaningful heritage or practice for the world.