ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the converging upon and mechanisms operating within the world of guitar making in Spain. Local discourses of identity and authenticity emerge in the distinctly ‘between-worlds’ setting of the guitar workshop, this local world made all the more distinctive though a poetics of place and a politics of craftsmanship. The organizers and participants of the festival present a showcase of guitar playing from around the world, yet preserve a sense of the intensely local guitar world that is Andalusia and the guitar as featured in a variety of media. The ebb and flow of demand, and the increased commodification and mass consumption of musical instruments are, of course, new phenomena. The guitar plays an important role in local people’s sense of place, in the construction of a local identity, and in the ways in which a place like Granada is presented to the outside world.
