This article problematizes the view that music education is primarily justified on account of its uniquely "humanizing" influence. Not only does this general humanist argument clearly fail to convince policy-makers to actually revalidate public music education, but moreover it often seems to rest on highly questionable premises. Without contesting the idea itself that music education "can" be a humanizing agency, we will try to show that such humanization cannot be achieved without acknowledging music's "inhuman," "animal" forces. While first this paradox is elaborated through a philosophical reading of the Ancient myth of Midas's donkey ears, a second part will expand on its implications for the "political" bearing of music's contemporary public-educational (ir)relevance. Ultimately, we claim that by paying closer attention to the ways in which music allows animal 'nonsense' to disrupt processes of collective human sense-making, we can start thinking of practices of music education that might truly engender a renewed sense of humanity.