Finally today, Ross Daly's life defies international boundaries. Daly is a musician who was born in England. He is of Irish descent and he grew up travelling a lot with his family. He finally settled on the Greek island of Crete. And as The World's April Peavey tells us, music has been a key part of Ross Daly's journey.

This is the kind of music Ross Daly likes to play these days. Daly plays the Cretan Lyra -- a sort of small, pear-shaped fiddle. He picked up the instrument after settling on the Greek island in the 1970's.

Before that, Daly played all kinds of instruments -- and experimented with all kinds of music. His first instrument was the cello. Daly learned how to play it as a kid in the United States.

Then -- when he was just 11 years old -- he studied classical guitar in Japan. Then he discovered Afghan and Indian music. Daly says his taste for classical and traditional types of music made him feel a bit odd growing up.

DALY: "A little bit yes. Ever since a fairly young age I took an interest in what you might call modal musical traditions. At that time not really understanding why or not actually caring all that much either. It was not a mainstream activity, not by any means."

Daly's music nowadays still has echoes of the many different traditions he's sampled along the way. But the main element of his work is the Cretan lyra. Daly didn't learn how to play the instrument overnight. He studied under one of Crete's master lyra players for many years. Daly says he had to work hard to earn the trust of local musicians.

DALY: "Some of them would actually be a bit wary, "What's this guy going to do with all this stuff, here is playing our instrument. Why?" So, what I tried to explain to them all is, for example, I studied the Cretan lyra. It was never my intention to become a Cretan lyra player. That would be a silly thing to try and do. What I wanted to do is learn how to play the lyra. To learn how to play the lyra as the person who I am."

Now many musicians in Crete admit that Daly has become a master lyra player in his own right. But Daly doesn't pretend that what he does in any way surpasses local traditions. He likes to think of his music as an added bonus to a musical tradition he knows is not his own.

DALY: "Tradition can not be confined to, ok you hear music from a certain place in the world, you're not from there yourself, but you happen to fall in love with it. It can't be forbidden for you to play it. But, also you're going to play it inevitably in your way. And there's got to be a place for that as well."

Ross Daly has been living in Crete for over 30 years now. He runs a musical workshop called "Labyrinth." Budding musicians come from many countries to study the lyra and a long list of other instruments from all over the globe. And when Daly's not teaching -- he's composing and performing with his own ensemble - the Ross Daly Quartet.

For The World, I'm April Peavey.