From being a Non Profit Musical Artists, I found out quickly that people resist home grown organic produce, as they often only trust food from McDonalds or Walmart. Even at Halloween, people are taught to only trust what is wrapped in plastic. Taught to trust plastic more than presence.
Institutionalization reshapes humans and music in the same way: by replacing organic identity with managed identity, spontaneous expression with regulated behavior, and inner truth with external compliance. What happens to a person inside an institution is almost identical to what happens to music inside the industry.
You can have the greatest music ever recorded, & most won’t even press play, if it’s not served institutionally.
People often enforce pay to play society, and this now includes music, While wondering why the music they do hear is so deeply rooted in materialism: music aka love as a business. We wonder why a lot of new music sounds the same while enforcing it to arrive via the same route.
Free music created freely away from the desire of profit is practically drowned out. It wasn’t always this way, as music as a product is a recent phenomenon with recording, as music was once communal, and an activity to participate in.
People mock any avenue besides the corporate tried and true. Free download pokemon cards to catch the eye? you will be mocked.
Post your music online? you’ll simple be ignored, people wont even press play, as they demand a million dollar ad campaign from record labels to make sure they can’t even realize it as an ad campaign for them to even press play.
We’ve essentially commodified music & art, while putting it down for being commodified. Take away the money aspect and artists will still do music. They’ll even breathe life into novelty as they create freely.
People want new, yet they’re afraid of it, the unknown.
Even compliments we do hear are institutionizational: “ARE YOU SIGNED!?!? 😯”
Emotional Flattening
Institutional settings discourage emotional range. Too much anger is punished. Too much joy is suspicious. Too much individuality is destabilizing.
People learn to flatten themselves to survive.
Signed music is pushed to this same emotional neutrality:
- safe sadness
- safe joy
- safe rebellion
- safe sensuality
Nothing too raw, too long, too complex, too culturally specific, too spiritually charged.
Parallel: The emotional spectrum collapses into what is easiest to manage and monetize.
Surveillance and Self Censorship
Institutionalized people live under constant observation. Eventually, they internalize the watcher. They censor themselves before anyone else needs to.
Artists under contract do the same. They pre edit:
- lyrics
- themes
- production choices
- vocal intensity
- cultural references
They imagine the A&R rep in the room even when they’re alone.
Surveillance becomes internalized, and authenticity becomes a risk.
Forced Dependency
Realized this today visiting an elderly friend in the hospital. At home she had a lot to do, thus always on her feet. In there, they do everything for her & thus her energy deteriorates. This is also at the cost of her freedom.
This is a parallel in life in wrestling with, as years ago I set out to focus on on the music, assuming, build it, and they will come. Now I have the sound beyond my dreams, while even most family members won’t even press play, or automatically assuming “it’s not my genre.” What even is genre? Gentry? A narrow class assuming position above most? while resistant to those they assume best?
Dependency takes away our ability to trust our personal instinct.
Erasure of Communal Function
Institutionalization isolates people from their natural communities. It interrupts lineage, culture, and belonging.
Both are extracted from their natural ecosystem and repurposed for institutional goals.
The best “deal” we find comes free from Nature. Then the Community. Then the Church, and then when it’s not a deal at all, the marketplace.
Standardization Over Soul
Institutions standardize behavior to maintain order.
Labels standardize sound to maintain profit.
The Original Purpose Gets Distorted
Institutionalization often disconnects people from their original purpose, identity, and inner compass.
Signed music becomes disconnected from its original purpose:
- ceremony
- love
- ancestry
- community
- emotional truth
- spiritual function
It becomes content instead of communion.
Institutionalization, whether of people or of music, is not just a system of control. It’s a system of reshaping. It takes something organic, unpredictable, and alive, and turns it into something manageable, profitable, and compliant.
Music becomes institutionalized the same way people do:
taught to forget its own freedom.
Let’s reclaim our closeness to the source, instead of the institutions. We Don’t need the middleman, as all is provided by the Divine Organizer of which is always just a whisper away. Not in surveillance, but in love & being. Direct.
We dont need the marketplace to make music. We dont need the church to be a Saint. we have everything we need to grow & create.
the cure for institutionalization is reconnection, not rebellion.
When someone creates outside the institution, the institution trained mind doesn’t know how to receive it. So it ignores, mocks, or demands credentials.
Societal Pattern
this isn’t just about music. Once you see the pattern, you see it everywhere:
- in healthcare
- in education
- in religion
- in family systems
- in government
- in social media
- in art
- in identity
Institutionalization is a template. Music is just one of the clearest mirrors because it’s supposed to be the freest.
to Artists
When we think to ourselves, it’s impossible to truly be heard without a record label… that’s the pressure point where institutionalization reveals itself, & once we realize the walls, we find the escape.