Music is the best ~ if you’re a musician with an ego to match how big you want it to be. In practice it only changes impressionable hearts and rarely actually changes anything, certainly not in the long run. A recent show on bbc4 revealed that all the big names changed nothing, where there is a sine-wave running through all music, and that denotes music as falling towards the middle.
Zappa wasn’t the greatest musician. There were others who were greater, especially in earlier centuries. But this is not what this thread should deal with. I used the Zappa quote in order to just ask more generally: IS MUSIC THE BEST?
Music makes us feel good. Isn’t that a good argument?
Music moves humans of all cultures, in a way that doesn’t seem to happen with e.g. animals. Nobody really understands why listening to music - which, unlike sex or food, has no intrinsic value - can trigger such profoundly rewarding experiences.
Music is exquisitely emotionally evocative, which is why a touch of happy music makes even unrelated pictures seem more pleasant. In light of the above, then, we are led to the conclusion that the artifact of music should contain some distinctly human elements.