Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with Greek Cypriot elementary school children in urban and rural areas of the Republic of Cyprus, the author describes and analyses the ways in which national musical identity is constructed in and out of school in connection with Cypriot traditional music. Findings reveal the development of fluid and often insecure, ambiguous and contradictory national musical identities as a result of the ideological messages children receive from their musical enculturation contexts. In addition public music education not only fails to assist pupils to become familiar with the tradition's inherent meanings and processes of creation and performance, but enhances children's contradictory ideological understanding and construction of an ambiguous national musical identity.