ABSTRACT
The two chapters in Part 3 shift the challenge to the principle of identity in thinking about traditional music from the level of cultures or communities to the level of discrete subjectivities. Following the Deleuze-inspired philosophy of Jonathan Roffe, I consider subjectivities as necessarily dividual, rather than individual. This distinction emphasizes the notion that music’s affective power is active in the production of subjectivities, in contrast to the usual conception of music as a medium in which pre-existing subjects express or locate their sense of identity. I also mobilize Deleuze’s concept of the fold, which relates to the processes of interiorization and exteriorization that are involved in experiencing, feeling, situating and expressing oneself in the world, to think through the way that music mediates, and in turn is mediated by, innumerable other affects, dispositions and experiences in this process of producing dividual subjectivities. In Chapter 9, I explore this process by comparing the early life and mature career of Frank Kidson, a pioneer folk music collector in the north of England. Folk music played a significant role in the long-term production of Kidson’s position concerning the ethics and aesthetics of traditional music, mediating and mediated by his passions for history and landscape painting, as well as his close relationships with his mother and niece.
