Musical Language Worlds

A future without work seems daunting but it shouldn’t. We have known how to live in community and ritual; in song and dance, and reverence. At first blush, one might take Keith Cantú at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions for a historian of South Asian religions with particular convergent fondnesses for Bengal and the occult. That is not untrue, but his real passion might be music, especially Baul songs. He sees music as more than just an accessory to life, but as a way of life, as he expresses through his exploration of musical language worlds, systems of life and community, spiritual and nonspiritual, that revolve around music.³⁴ We already have answers to how we may live in a future without work. Music is one of them.

Music lends itself to ritual and there is no reason to think we cannot spend the bulk of our future in ritual and community. Song has the ability to transcend the material plane; many Indian subcontinent traditions see song and mantra as literal manifestations of the divine.³⁵ Setting the lofty aside, music is fun.

No matter how great and addictive AI-generated music may be, we will always be able to play and make music. One need not be the best musician to enjoy playing music. In a demonstration of a Baul song circle on the lawn in front of Swartz Hall Harvard Divinity School, Dr. Cantú made me realize that playing music requires no special skill or power. I picked up unfamiliar instruments, including variants of drums and string instruments, and just began to play. It was so natural, no lessons needed. Music is not just a fun distraction. It can be a way of life and should be on our short list for the future.