Symbolic and Social Transformation in the Lute Cultures of Crete: Music, Technology and the Body in a Mediterranean Society

This article considers the role of lute culture (specifically, the lyra ) in a Mediterranean society. Cretan lute cultures have historical roots imagined and otherwise which entangle them completely in a local musical and social world. My research into Cretan musical instrument cultures among others have demanded not only a scholarly response to new questions but also the construction and application of a broad theoretical and analytical framework with which to try and understand lute worlds. It is within this cultural and academic context, therefore, that I probe the relationship of music, technology, and the body and how these connections are configured in a Cretan-Mediterranean context, in symbol and metaphor, and as engendered and socially active, existing where musical and social practices coalesce. Therefore broader and theoretically demanding questions must form the basis of an opening discussion as defining of an approach and preparing the ground for a focussed study of the Cretan context.