Arcadia Calling: Cretan Music and the Popular Imagination

Abstract

In this article, I examine some of the ways in which the musical culture of Crete provides for a particular kind of encounter between islanders and off-islanders, centred on notions of paradise. For local patrtiots lyra music represents the sounds and images of an Arcadian New Minoa, for outsiders it is most often part of a fabricated and stereotypical tourist package. Paradise in this latter package deal, is largely represented by a parade of local characters parachuted into resort culture and its all inclusive entertainment experience. Here local music and dancing, nightclubbing, beaches and sex mix. Cretan lyra music in its sounds, poetry and images, takes its meaning from a celebration of local values. These values include notions of honour and patronage, family and household, gender and sexuality. As a variously successful commercial enterprise, Cretan lyra music is now performed for the consumption of a range of insiders and outsiders who challenge and contest its identity.

Keywords:

• Crete
• Cretan musical culture
• Musical tourism
• Paradise

Notes

1. The lyra [lira] (plural= lyres [lires]) is a three stringed, upright, bowed lute; the Iaouto [lauto] is a four course [8 strings grouped in pairs], plucked, long-necked lute.

2. See Greek Mythology Link: http://hompage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Arcadia.html

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin Dawe

Kevin Dawe is Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology in the School of Music at the University of Leeds where he is also a member of the Centre for the Study of Popular and World Musics (Populus), and the Centre for African Studies. His publications include the co-edited collections, Guitar Cultures (Berg, 2001) and The Mediterranean in Music (Scarecrow, 2005), the single-edited collection Island Musics (Berg, 2004), and Music and Musicians in Crete: Performance and Ethnography in a Mediterranean Island Society (Scarecrow, 2007)