seeming contests and measures of worth. What's gotten me all along in this whole discussion is the casual put-down Kennedy made of music

Yes, I have to agree that's the way it sounds WW, though I don't know the full context (which is always dodgy). But certainly going by words, "educative" implies "able to educate" - and music, as an aspect of life, (hopefully) educates us both emotionally and intellectually. We can learn to feel, and we can learn how to deal with feelings.

At the end of the day, though, this is yet another of those meaningless distinctions, like "head/heart", "mind/body", "nature/nurture", "matter/spirit" etc. We all know that the world doesn't really fall into two neat halves, and we all know that these so-called oppositions are really just extremes on the same continuum. But this is an area where words play tricks on us, emphasising separation rather than connectedness.