Why would a family "ban music"?

I know, right? I don't get it either.

It's just a cartoon.

It's because the head of the family can not only hold a grudge her entire life, she can keep holding it after she's dead! And keep scaring her children and grandchildren into doing the same long after she's gone!

Of course it's stupid, but then almost everything that's done because of anger is stupid.

In some cultures(muslim) listening to music is a sin.

How is it any different than many religious restrictions that continue in perpetuity such as not being allowed to eat certain foods. At one time they probably made sense because food handling wasn't as good as it is in modern times and people got sick.

It's not stupid, but it is pretty unrealistic. I mean, they were Catholic (Abuelita crosses herself at one point, and there's a crucifix on prominent display in the ofrenda.) What did they do at church? Not sing?

On the other hand, it's no more unrealistic than an entire town banning music in "Footloose". Except when you consider that the ban spanned three generations. That's unreal.

What I'd like to know is what happened to Coco and Julio's height. In the opening animations they're both shown as being of normal height, but in the afterlife they're both really, really short. Not stooped with age, just extremely short. How did that happen?

Yeah, it's like if they banned illegal immigration. Just doesn't make any silly sense. D:

This might look stupid at first glance, but I think I can explain it.
It is not music and musicians, that is the real issue.
Rather, I would say that the Riveras were terrified that another family member would leave and never come back.
And nobody had told them anything about Hector beyond that he was a musician who disappeared.
They had no idea that he was murdered right before he was going to return home and believed the worst of him.
Heck, I think that they had reached a point where none of them except for Coco even knew his name!
So that is how Miguel could believe that De la Cruz was his ancestor and why nobody corrected him about that.
Anyway, Imelda believed that music had made Hector abandon her and Coco and reacted out of pain and anger.
Unfortunately, she happened to be a formidable woman and scared everyone except for Miguel into obeying her.
Elena inherited that trait and the zeal to keep music from the family from her grandmother.
And in the generation after that, Enrique was notably calmer about this than the fierce matriarchs were.
But he still thought that being a musician would automatically be a bad future for his son, just because...
And all of them believed that Miguel had to become like their distorted view of Hector if they supported him.
For it had never even occurred to them that they maybe didn't know the whole truth about their lost ancestor.
They had to keep their fears alive until they just came across as toxic and ridiculous at the same time...

It is ironic then that a musical prodigy like Miguel was born into this family.
(Except I guess that one of them had to be more like Hector and put a stop to this nonsense.)
It would have been hilarious if I hadn't felt so sorry for the poor kid, who had to think that no one understood him.
Of course, they tried to make him fall into line to the point that his grandmother even wrecked his guitar.
It was their way of dealing with that their fear of having another musician in the family had come true.
It is clear that Elena thought that wrecking the guitar would keep Miguel from disappearing like Hector had done.
For yet again, that is what this whole mess really was about.
It had gone far enough that the fear of losing another loved one made them unable to deal with this rationally.
But naturally, Elena managed to only make her twelve-year-old grandson run away into the night.
And I don't blame Miguel for being angry enough with his family to say that he didn't want them anymore.
They had been awful to him in their misguided attempts to keep him from harm and becoming an outcast.
And what if this situation hadn't been resolved during the course of this story?
It could have been a self-fulfilling prophecy because they never showed Miguel any support.
He would have been pressured into eventually leaving them and Santa Cecilia to become a musician elsewhere.
I guess that they then would have put all the blame on him and "the curse" without seeing their own mistakes.
Of course, that is not how this story ends, but really, they all needed help before it went that far...

So I get how this generational trauma started, and I even get how it had been passed down from parent to child.
(Even though I feel that "Encanto" was more realistic with having only two generations suffer like this.)
However, somebody had to get enough of this toxic environment and finally make things right.
They needed a family member, who could be their cycle breaker and make them see how wrong they had been.
Miguel was burdened with this responsibility while he still was only a kid, but it couldn't go on any longer.
Not only was Miguel himself unhappy, and Hector was soon about to die the "final death" and needed help too.
But it was also necessary that the other Riveras stopped being a dysfunctional family at last...