ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the way that current definitions of traditional music, heritage music and folk music emerged in reference to Cecil Sharp’s theory of English folk music over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Each of these musical territories has been constructed according to the logic of identity that is enshrined in Sharp’s principles of continuity, variation and selection. These principles were used by Sharp as a concrete explanation for the way that national identity came to be embedded within folk music. In the early twentieth century, a period when English musicians were staging a renaissance of national art music, this theory facilitated the promotion of folk music as a symbol of national identity. Although the priorities of musicians and culture workers worldwide have changed significantly since this time, the principles of continuity, variation and selection continue to serve as a theoretical foundation for definitions traditional music, leaving it open to similar forms of co-option. My analysis draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of assemblage, territoriality and the molar line. The insistent logic of continuity, variation and selection constitute the first aspect of a molar line that territorializes traditional music assemblages. This molar line organizes traditional music assemblages according to a repetitive, dogmatic logic that I call ‘symbolification’, situating identity as the core value of music traditions and facilitating their exploitation by ideological and commercial agenda.
