Kelly Jones slams school music cuts
Welsh rocker Kelly Jones has slammed officials in his home town for slashing funding for school music departments.
The Stereophonics frontman began learning guitar and playing in bands while he was at school in Cwmaman, Wales.
He has aimed an angry tirade at education officials at the local
Rhondda Cynon Taf Council over plans to cut music lessons and
school orchestras.
Jones insists the move is "incredibly short-sighted" and will lead
to children "doing nothing with their lives".
The star Britain's Western Mail, "You'll just end up with a bunch
of disillusioned kids who'll rebel against having their passion
taken from them and end up doing nothing with their lives. To take
a child who hates school, but goes along because they know they'll
get to learn a musical instrument or play in the orchestra, and
deny them the one thing they look forward to will only serve to
corrode their interest in learning altogether... It's just
incredibly short-sighted.
"These days there's more and more emphasis being placed upon the
creatives and the non-lateral thinkers, even by institutions as
traditional as the big City band. I wasn't at all academic in
school, and back then even the music lessons were very dry and
starchy - they were more concerned with learning to read sheet
music and studying the work of classical composers like
Mozart."