Music is more powerful than you think.
Music will not give you what you want.

I argue that these two maxims I am asserting help us gain insights into music. They also help us gain insights regarding devices of power in general. But here, I will use these maxims to offer brief insights into the more specific topic of musical participation.

When we experience music to be more powerful than we think, it spurs us on to increased musical participation. For some of us, it is easy to be consumed by the power that we are attempting to understand. We might have our own way to participate, whether it is as a consumer or a producer or a combination of the two. A person might pick up a guitar and practice many hours a day, or a person might dive deeper into a specific artist or genre by simply listening to recorded music. This increased participation is owing to the natural power of music. It is not an intrinsically bad thing to participate more in music, and yet we are willing to dramatically change our lives as increased musical participation continuously reiterates the experience that music is more powerful than you think.

However, some of us also have moments of discovery, in various ways and degrees, that music will not give you what you want. Just as music’s power can be discovered of a specific artist or genre, music’s disappointment can also be experienced regarding a specific kind of music, a specific or song (but it can also regard the general notion of music). Our reaction is that we refuse to participate in that music, since it does not give us what we want. The person practicing the guitar might hit a rut and stop improving. The listener might feel alienated by the folk artist who goes electric. The maxim applied to specific music might reduce the musical participant to say, “only this music will give me what I want, all other music is __.” So there is a polarity that is owing to the power of music that incites a person to embrace some music as the standard of which other music is rejected.

Yet this second maxim asserts that music in general will not give you what you want. However, in granting this assertion, are we encouraging therefore that musical participation should cease? Far from it! After all, we have our first maxim: music is more powerful than you think. It is a power given to us by God. The mature musical participant does not need to harness that power to get what he wants, because it is not a power that is meant to be self-harnessed to that end. This is not to say that music should not be cultivated into specific forms; but we should say that music should not be shaped into a means of control as an attempt to grasp that power for ourselves. The mature cultivation of music should always embrace the power of music as a gift that is given from an outside Giver. Music, like any means of power, is not a polarizing all-or-nothing thing when it comes to our participation in it. Those who do not participate in music should probably consider participating in it more. Those who are free to participate in music many hours in a day should be free to do so because they know that music (as a proposed giver) will not give them what they want, for music is rather a free means (that is given) to that desired end, like any other device of power.