Before asking how music shapes humanity, this session began with a more fundamental question: who is included when we speak of the human? The conversation moved beyond the classroom and the stage, toward those whose voices are often unheard, those who live with physical or learning differences, and even toward presences beyond the human: nature, animals, and ritual. Music, after all, does not belong to one kind of body, one kind of listener, or one kind of voice.

Within education, the issue is not simply a lack of skill among teachers. Many are trained first as practitioners, then placed within systems that demand the work of teaching. Those who wish to create meaningful forms of learning must therefore negotiate the gaps inside the system, making space for what they believe matters most for their students. The session also asked us to imagine music in schools not as a privilege reserved for children in ensembles, but as a common space of experience, expression, and belonging.

Beyond formal education, music continues to act where language cannot. A lullaby binds mother and child before words are shared. Ritual sound connects communities to beliefs that cannot be reduced to reason. Here, music is not merely a tool to be designed or applied. It is a human gesture toward something deeper than notation, technique, or melody.


Rather than offering a simple answer to how music makes humanity, the session opened another question: have we created the conditions for music to meet every kind of person? This question belongs both to educational systems, where teachers should not be left to struggle alone, and to everyday life, where sound carries meaning long before it is named as music.