Arcadia Calling: Cretan Music and the Popular Imagination

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.