Music as a Human Need: A Plea for Free National Instruction in Music

Music is not a privilege, argues Alma Webster Hall Powell in this impassioned 1920s treatise, it is a fundamental human need as essential as food or shelter. Writing with fierce conviction, Powell demonstrates how music has evolved alongside civilization itself, serving as an antidote to the emotional turmoil created by modern industrial life. She traces music's role in societies across history, showing how communal musical practice functions as a pressure valve for individual anxiety and a binding agent for collective identity. Powell's central thesis is radical for her time and resonant for ours: that free, national musical instruction should be available to every citizen, not merely the wealthy. She argues that a society denying its people access to music is fundamentally unhealthy, that emotional and social equilibrium depends on this essential human capacity for creative expression. This book remains a passionate historical argument for why the arts deserve public investment and universal access.