My two cents on the music theory debate: personally I think the relationship between music and music theory is analogous to the relationship between the physical world and the academic discipline of physics. Of course the physical world came first, and the job of physical theories is to describe the world as it exists, not prescribe how the world should be. But theories of physics enables us to build things in the physical world that we wouldn't have thought to build without those theories. In the same way, music exists prior to music theory and the role of music theory is descriptive, but knowing music theory is nevertheless useful for musicians because it gives them ideas they might otherwise not have come up with.