ABSTRACT
This chapter continues to investigate the role of musical affect in the folding of dividual subjectivities, this time developing a case study of Lucy Broadwood’s encounters with folk music, from her early childhood to the height of her career as a leading figure in the folk revival. Broadwood’s father and uncle were both enthusiastic collectors of folk music, but her relationship with them was distant, albeit loving. Throughout her life, folk music emerged as an affective bridge between herself and distant realms of social experience. As Broadwood matured and began her own career as a folk music collector and scholar, her social class distanced her from the everyday experience of the folk singers from whom she collected, while her gender made it difficult to mix socially with folk singers in rural taverns, as her male counterparts in the FSS did. Like many female intellectuals of her time, Broadwood explored the occult as a potential avenue towards spiritual knowledge outside the strictures of traditionally male-dominated institutions, like the Anglican Church, and her writings about folk music suggest a keen interest in rituals and superstitions surrounding their performance. Throughout her life, the affective force of folk music intensified Broadwood’s fascination with these distant worlds. As in the previous chapter, biographic and musical analyses support the conclusion that the relationship between a subject and traditional music is best understood not in terms of identity but in terms of affect, folding, intensification and the continual becoming-other of the subject.
