No Music Allowed

"Music is against the law of Robotnik! NO! MORE! MUSIC!"

— The Music Destroyer, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, "Sonic's Song"

Music has a way of touching the soul, but when it touches the soul the wrong way, expect the person affected to shut it out of their life.

Usually, the absence of a loved one who enjoyed music will cause the bereaved to forbid music from playing in their home again. However, it can reach a much different extent and there can be other motives for banning music, such as a dictator wanting to break his slaves spirits and keep them from enjoying any sense of freedom, maybe its the phobia of The New Rock & Roll or something as simple as being embarrassed that the person can't dance. There are also religious reasons and the fear that music and dancing will lead people astray. In any case, the people who are affected by this ban will become miserable and life will become dull and humdrum. Often with this trope, someone will rebel against the idea and find some way to bring music back into the lives of their friends and family.

The one who implements this trope is usually a Fun-Hating Confiscating Adult or Fantasy-Forbidding Parent who needs a bit of healing from the tragic event that incited the ban. Can also be done by The Killjoy or a Fun-Hating Villain. Compare Musical Number Annoyance. Someone might apply Musicalis Interruptus to anyone caught breaking the rule. On a worldwide level, the ban is part of a World of Silence.

Part of Music Tropes.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Disney Ducks Comic Universe: One of the many stand-alone comics takes place in Alternative Universe that is a straight Parody of Fahrenheit 451, except "firemen" burn anything related to music instead of books. Scrooge takes the role of Fun-Hating Confiscating Adult whose Cynicism Catalyst as a child was having his voice-recognizing safe looted after he made the mistake of humming the tune that unlocks it in public.
• Nightcat: The initial conflict of the story comes from Jacqueline's father forbidding her from playing music after her mother, a failed musician, drank herself to death. Jacqueline rebels against this, secretly playing in a Garage Band with her friends during high school and eventually becoming a world-famous pop star using a pseudonym.
• In The Worlds of Aldebaran, music is forbidden by the corrupt government of Aldébaran.

Films — Animated

• The Cat Piano: After numerous cat singers are mysteriously kidnapped, including Le Chat Blanc, the city bans all music and musical instruments to protect everyone. The ban is lifted after the singers are rescued from the mad human keeping them in his cat piano.
• Coco: After her husband does not return from his music tour, Miguel's great-great-grandmother assumes the worst and blames music for leading him astray. Thus, she enacts a 96-year-old ban on it in her home. Four generations later, Miguel's quest to defy her ban leads him to the ghosts of both of his great-great-grandparents so they can reconcile.
• The Jetsons movie "Rockin' with Judy Jetson" features the main antagonist Felonia Funk, who wants to get rid of all music. She hates it so much that she would freak out every time she hears the word "music".
• The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning: When Ariel was very young, her mother died while trying to retrieve the music box Triton had given her. This caused Triton to blame music for the death of his wife and ban it for 10 years. This doesn't sit well with his Rebellious Princess daughter Ariel, who joins a secret music club behind his back. After the club gets discovered, Ariel decides to run away, only to find her mother's music box. Seeing the music box again reminds Triton of the good times his family had before his wife's death and lifts the ban to reconcile with his daughters.
• Yellow Submarine: The villains are the Blue Meanies, a race of beings that absolutely hates music. When they take over the peaceful and music-loving Pepperland, they ban all music and turn the place miserable. However, one Pepperlander manages to escape and asks The Beatles to fight the Blue Meanies and save Pepperland.

Films — Live-Action

• Anchors Aweigh: In the animated story flashback, Jerry Mouse (yes, *that* Jerry Mouse) bans music and dancing in his kingdom because he doesn't know how to dance.
• BASEketball: Lampshaded. The opening narration discusses how sports used to be honorable and celebrated "the human potential to achieve excellence" before they became monetized and commercialized. In their search for greener pastures and greater profits, entire teams would change cities. Salt Lake City is referenced as one of those cities, and one that bans music.
  Narrator: The Jazz moved to Salt Lake City, where they don't allow music.
• Footloose: Reverend Shaw Moore forbids rock music in a small town after an unfortunate incident with his son. It isn't long before a newcomer named Ren turns the town upside-down.
• Parodied in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when Prince Herbert's father bans him from singing any musical numbers on his wedding day, even cutting off the background music when he fears a song is about to break out. However, he's powerless to stop it when the (surviving) wedding guests join in a Crowd Song.
• There is a scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Andy Dufresne plays opera music through the prison's loudspeakers. The warden is not pleased, to put it mildly.

Literature

• The Giver: Music is completely banned in the Community under the policy of "Sameness" to remove strife and division from their society.
• The short story "It's a Good Life" (yes, the very same one The Twilight Zone adapted into an episode; see below for that example) As with The Twilight Zone, the boy bans all music and singing. However, the book explains that he's only 3 years old and just hates loud noises.
• The Screwtape Letters: Heaven is described as a place where all is either music or blessed silence. So both music and silence are forbidden in Hell: everything is noise and cacophony.
• Sound! Euphonium: Kumiko's older sister Mamiko is a downplayed example. She doesn't hate music in general, but she can't stand listening to concert band music anymore because she's still angry at their parents for forcing her to quit the trombone against her will. So when Kumiko joins the high school band, Mamiko won't allow her to practice her euphonium at home or play any concert band music on the stereo. Once Kumiko and Reina are quietly listening to a euphonium CD in her room with the door closed, and Mamiko just walks right in without knocking and turns it off.

Live-Action TV

• In The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon, ever the Control Freak, does not like it when others play music to the point where he has banned whistling in the apartment. Once, when Sheldon goes out on an errand, Leonard takes the opportunity to make a whistling trio with Raj and Howard. In another episode, it is stated that Sheldon forbids Leonard, or anyone he's forced to drive him somewhere, to play music in their car because he doesn't want the police they think they're Gangbangers.
• Night Visions: A small town has banned all music because they believe if anyone sings it will summon a monster that will kill them all. They are right and it does.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): In "It's a Good Life", Anthony — whose mental powers force his neighborhood to live in fear — does not like singing, so no one ever tries to sing for fear that he'll get angry and kill them.

Music

• The music video for Chamillionaire's Hip Hop Police presents a scenario where hip-hop music has been outlawed.
• Dream Theater's Concept Album The Astonishing takes place in a dystopian future where music has been outlawed by the reigning monarchy and machines called "noise machines" or NOMACs emit obnoxious sounds in their stead. The first proper song, "The Gift of Music", paints how dull the situation was when The Protagonist came to the city.
  We are living day-to-day
  Forced to bear the lion's share
  People just don't have the time for music anymore
  But no one seems to care
• Played for Laughs in the Jive Aces Skiffle Combo song "Mama Don't Allow". The song focuses on the titular character trying to whack every musician she comes across, all without success (although she does manage to bean the dancing girls with apples).
• Styx: Kilroy Was Here is a concept album about a world where Rock N Roll has been banned
• Frank Zappa: Joe's Garage revolves around a dystopian society where music is banned, influenced by the Iranian Revolution and subsequent ban on most forms of music under the new regime. In the album's setting, the ban on music results in amateur rocker Joe being imprisoned and going insane, eventually living out the rest of his days as an unassuming factory worker (with the vocally anti-conformist Zappa comedically portraying this as a Fate Worse than Death).

Theatre

• Played with in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals. Paul (The Hero and the titular man who doesn't like musicals) is constantly unnerved by people breaking into song around him and tries to shut them up. The reason why this happens is a whole lot darker than usual, though: the musical element of the play isn't a regular Musical World Hypotheses, but instead it's the manifestation of an alien Hive Mind taking over the town.
• The Sound of Music: Fraulein Maria arrives at the von Trapp household to find that music became forbidden by the Captain after his wife died. Maria then decides to bring music back into his and the children's lives. After he hears the children singing, the Captain finally relents and lifts the ban on music.
  Fraulein Schmitt: Ever since the Captain lost his poor wife he runs this house as if he was on one of his ships again.
  Fraulein Helga: Whistles, orders.
  Fraulein Franz: No more music, no more laughing. Nothing that reminds him of her.
• We Will Rock You has a variation: an ancient prophecy states that rock 'n roll will bring about the downfall of Killer Queen, the Corrupt Corporate Executive who runs the Globalsoft Corporation, so she's destroyed every musical instrument on the planet and forces everyone to listen to computer-generated songs, which creates a culture of conformity. Main character Galileo hears rock music in his head despite never encountering it, and eventually joins up with fellow non-conformist Scaramouche and a group known as the Bohemians who believe in the prophecy; by working together, they bring music back to the world and defeat Killer Queen.

Video Games

• Divinity: Original Sin II: Lohse is a Wandering Minstrel but cannot perform any music for most of the game because the demon possessing her hates it. The first time she tries to play a lute in Act I, the demon makes her smash the instrument against the ground, destroying it for good. Lohse is only able to sing again after killing the demon in Act 3.
• Elite Beat Agents: The finale has space aliens invading the planet and banning music.

Web Videos

• Outside Xbox: In one Dungeons and Dragons campaign titled "Quiet Riot", the Oxventurer's Guild faces the Order of Keeping It Down, which has imposed a curfew of total silence on the town of Inkwater. This includes shutting down the local taverns and dismantling church organs. As a result, the residents of Inkwater begin to hate the Order for disrupting their way of life. Later in the episode, it's revealed that an owlbear is sleeping underneath the castle that the Order uses as a base of operations, explaining why they strictly enforced silence and quiet.
• Played for Laughs in Thomas Sanders's series "Bad Musical Ideas". In one short, The Diary of Anne Frank gets turned into a musical, with Emily Garcia playing Anne. She starts to sing, but she's immediately silenced by Thomas and Michael Tremaine as fellow Jews. This is because there is a Nazi downstairs.
  Emily: I wish I—
  Thomas and Michael: SHHHH!
  Michael: [hushed] Idiot! Why would you be singing right now?!
  Thomas: [also hushed and pointing his finger down] The Nazi's down-!

Western Animation

• In the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode "Sonic's Song", Catty Carlisle writes a song about Sonic, which all of Mobius starts singing. Even Scratch and Grounder can't help singing and dancing along to the song even though they know it's a song about their archenemy. When Dr. Robotnik finds out, he is not happy about this and invents the Music Destroyer robot to rid all of Mobius of music, save for the Villain Song that he writes about himself.
• Aladdin: The Series: "Heads, You Lose" introduces the tyrannical Caliph Kapok, a man so nasty he's been reduced to a disembodied head because his own heart rejected him. At one point, after getting his body and caliphate back, he passes judgement on a craftsman charged with wasting time by making musical instruments. Kapok sentences the man to spend his days making violins much to his confusion, only for the Caliph to explain that while music serves no purpose in and of itself, it does make excellent firewood.
• American Dad!: When Stan is transferred to Saudi Arabia, he witnesses one of his new co-workers singing. The co-worker is shot because singing was illegal in the country. Later, Francine starts singing out of protest because she hated living in the country.
• Bubble Guppies has a special episode set in space, where Major Bummer (played by George Takei) is trying to eliminate all music in the galaxy.
• One episode of Dora the Explorer has a man named Senor Shush who hates music and takes away everyone's instruments. Dora and co. teach him to love music, and he plays the cymbals.
• Elena of Avalor: Shuriki is an Evil Sorceress who, upon taking over Avalor, bans all music simply because of her personal distaste for it.
• Madballs: "Escape from Orb" establishes that the Madballs are a rock band on their home planet Orb who fight against the tyranny of Commander Wolfbreath, a dictator who has conquered the planet and made music illegal.
• Oscar's Orchestra is set in the city of "New Vienna" in the year 735 squillion, 22 million, 381 thousand, six hundred and four, where the world is ruled by mad dictator Thadius Vent. As a boy, he neglected his piano lessons and was publicly humiliated during a concert when the audience realized that his sentient piano, Oscar, was actually playing himself. This left him with a lifelong hatred for music, and Oscar in particular; as world ruler, he has now outlawed all music and is determined to eliminate it altogether. Oscar and his fellow instruments are equally determined to thwart Thadius' plans and restore music to the world.
• Sonic Underground:
  • While making this rule is usually part of Robotnik's MO whenever he takes over in the franchise as a whole, this series took it to a whole other level. Robotnik has made music illegal throughout his empire, and one of the primary ways the Freedom Fighters, and the Hedgehog triplets in particular, show defiance of his rule is to hold underground concerts. That and sabotage, lots and lots of sabotage.
  • In the episodes "When in Rome" and "Six Is a Crowd", The Oracle of Delphius sends the main trio into parallel worlds (the Ancient Rome-like world where Sleetus (Sleet of this world) overthrew a true emperor and Mirror Universe where Robotnik is a good guy and main trio are evil, respectively). The ban on music is mandatory in both worlds (until the main trio visited them).
• Winx Club: In the episode "The Show Must Go On!" (or "Magic in My Heart"), Musa tells her friends the story of how her father forbade music after her mother died. At first, when he finds out that Musa has been dabbling in music, he is very angry with her. However, later on in the episode, he changes his mind and allows her to be happy.

Real Life

• Generally, any society that bans or seriously restricts music does so for religious reasons: it encourages dancing, which is immodest, especially for women; the dominant governing party has an interpretation of their religion that says this is abhorrent in the sight of God and that it encourages base conduct and lewdness; or that the only permissible music is the singing of hymns and their accompaniment. Examples of societies that banned or seriously restricted music would include England under the Commonwealth, where Oliver Cromwell had to cede religious authority to the Puritans (the same people who got to New England on the Mayflower). There is also the case of modern Afghanistan under the Taliban, who do not like music at all, arguing this is offensive to Allah.

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