Can music really play a part in reducing knife crime, drug addiction and all the rest of society’s ills? Yes, it can and politicians are finally waking up to the fact. Two weeks ago a unique event took place at London’s City Hall. Unheralded, and predictably ignored by the media, it was hosted by Boris Johnson’s livewire Arts Director, Munira Mirza and – due to the response to this unprecedented occurrence – what began life as a low key breakfast meeting soon turned into a full blown conference.
What could have prompted this overwhelming reaction? A discussion on music education believe it or not and the tangible buzz in the air was undoubtedly due to the Tory mayor’s initiative proving for once and for all that the importance of allowing our children access to music has transcended the political divide.
Coming on the heels of New Labour’s groundbreaking £332 million for music education in 2008 – 2011, the meeting was a triumph for all those musicians, journalists and educationalists who have worked so hard to bring home the crucial part that music can play in young people’s lives. It must have been particularly rewarding for Marc Jaffrey who, having spearheaded the government’s Music Manifesto since its inception four years ago, last week moved on to pastures new. Faced with initial scepticism about the extent of New Labour’s financial commitment Jaffrey steered the Manifesto to the point where it made political sense for the government to announce its landmark settlement for music education.
£9 million of that money has been set aside for In Harmony – the social project I am chairing with music at its heart. Inspired by Venezuela’s miraculous El Sistema programme, In Harmony will provide free instruments and free music lessons for children in at least three of the most deprived areas of England beginning next January.
Three hundred thousand children in Venezuela have had their lives saved by El Sistema and they are happy to tell their tales: “I’d either be dead or still smoking crack like when I was eight” said one French Horn player from its flagship Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra. “Joining the orchestra changed not only my life but my whole family’s. My father was drinking far too much and my brothers had dropped out of school. When I got hooked on my instrument my father stopped drinking and, one by one, my brothers went back to school” said a trumpeter.
Prevention is far cheaper than cure and, judging by the level of applications to run the programme in England, the sooner In Harmony goes nationwide the sooner the government will save a lot of money.
One misconception I am hoping In Harmony will correct is the perception that teaching music is somehow less important than performing it. I owe everything to my teachers. My first, at the age of four, was a lovely old lady named Alison Dalrymple who specialized in teaching young children the cello and who must have been doing something right because another of her pupils was Jacqueline du Pre.
When I was nine I entered the Royal College of Music’s Junior Department which, in those days, was populated almost entirely by pupils from non fee paying schools. My cello teacher was an attractive twenty something South African girl (sadly married) called Rhuna Martin, who I predictably developed a crush on. More importantly she caused me fall in love with the cello. Beyond the call of her duty she took a tiresome little boy, who hitherto had believed practising was something only doctors and solicitors did, to hear the first great cellist I ever heard – Pierre Fournier who, ironically, became my teacher many years later. I hadn’t believed it was possible for a cello to sound like that and it changed my life – just one small example of the power of music when allied to inspirational teaching.
