What is today called “democratization” is in fact a much deeper transformation. Music has been displaced from the space of initiation into that of domestic intimacy. It increasingly functions like home-cooked food—warm, predictable, comforting, and relatively easy to prepare. Historically, however, music was not a language of comfort but one of transformation. To become a musician meant to enter a discipline, a tradition that imposed rigor, demands, failure, and sometimes humiliation.