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Balls launches Year Of Music in schools
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 11 September 2009
Schools minister Ed Balls yesterday joined up with VV Brown, Killa Kela and Jamie Cullum at a school in Acton to kick off ‘The Year Of Music’, encouraging da kids to stop pretending to play on ‘Guitar Hero’ while illegally filling their memory sticks with music stolen off other people, and to have a go at being musical themselves. Whether VV Brown’s involvement will mean a generation of musical kids all ripping off ‘Monster Mash’ I don’t know.
The special celebrity music lesson was apparently beamed to schools around the country. The aim of the Year Of Music is to persuade schools and local authorities to put more time and effort (and cash presumably) into encouraging young people to take up playing a musical instrument. For real like. The aim is that by 2011 some two million primary school pupils will be practising their scales.
The Balls man said this: “I want to create a generation of talented performers who can sing, dance, play instruments and fly the flag for Great Britain. Music is at the very heart of British popular culture – it’s what kids talk about, it’s what they aspire to. It’s fantastic that TV talent shows like ‘X-Factor’ attract millions of viewers each week, but young people need to know that they can only become stars by mastering the basics when they’re young and by learning about a range of music – from classical to country. This is exactly why we need world class music education in schools”.
