Music is your birthright

Music is your birthright, your mother tongue, and you are fluent…

All throughout human history music was passed on through generations, taught by elders, traditional music making, community music making, ritual music making, a part of everyone at their core. This system has kept musical culture alive for over 60,000 years and in every traditional culture in the world!!!!

And then all of sudden in this weird modern Western world someone came up with the idea, that music should be outsourced to a professional. That instead of practicing cultural music making they should learn this extremely complicated foreign musical language (Western Music Theory) which completely eradicated ALL cultural significance as well as the passing on of knowledge, and has led to the loss of much history.

This then led to a capitalist opportunity. To train up the music teachers in institutions to reeeeally solidify the western knowledge, making sure those teachers ONLY abide by the western rules. And since this then makes them a professional they can charge lots of $$ for their knowledge.

This then led to the children of rich parents having access to music lessons and instruments. These are the ones who have the privilege of being called ‘musical’

And while many elders out there continue to support their children to express themselves musically, to play the music of their culture, to keep the traditions alive, the institution will not hear of it.

Play by ear? Not good enough.
Didn’t have lessons? Not good enough.
Don’t know your theory? Not good enough.

With each passing generation music becomes harder to access.

Lower budgets in schools means less music.
More poverty in the world means no music lessons.

Music went from a cultural birthright and part of every single person’s life to becoming highly gatekept and only accessible by the most privileged of us.

As someone who has benefited from the colonialism of music, as someone with extreme privilege who has accessed music all the way to 3 universities degrees and is considered a professional in the field, I can absolutely attest to this fact…

None of that stuff makes you more musical than any other human!

Whilst classist systems might continue to keep us from identifying as musical, the fact is that music is inside us, not outside of us.

We already are musical. We can already do it. We don’t need to learn how.

Music is bubbling away in our depths, and whatever else we access - the flute, the piano, the western scale, the theory - that’s all just someone else’s music.

It’s external to us. It’s not the pinnacle of musicianship. In fact, all of those lessons can potentially lead us further away from our musical source within.

Music is not something you have to learn and practice. It’s something you are. And something you get to be whenever you want.

It’s your birthright, your mother tongue.

And you are fluent.