MIDI playback with Debian

Debian Sarge: anyone know how to play a MIDI? I assumed this would be straightforward, but it appears I was wrong. All three of the MIDI players the distribution was kind enough to let me install complained about "no device" or something similar. I'm using a 2.6 series kernel but it appears to have no ALSA (what the hell?) In fact, just getting ALSA working would be a start. I have no idea why it appears to not be the default with Debian kernels. I'd very much like to avoid compiling my own kernel, otherwise I may as well just give up package managers altogether and go back to LFS. In fact, not to rant, but so far Debian has only given me trouble (no encrypted DVD playback, flakey CD burning, inability to compile anything good without installing a million -dev packages). Am I missing something?

My soundcard is a Creative SBLive! affair, emu10k1 driver.