"Chords are now traditional. Without them for most people, the music sounds empty."

Well, that reflects a severe lack of expression of understanding of music history.

Briefly, Western Music USED to be similar to 'Eastern Music' - there was a series of horizontal melodies, in counterpoint (not in exactly the strict musical definition though). Then Western musicians, after the discovery of the 'staff notation' way of writing it down, began to have named 'composers' of musical works, who discovered various forms of 'vertical' stuff called 'Harmony'. This took a long time to gradually 'corrupt' people (some musical styles remained mostly immune!)... :-P

:-)