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You cannot help but notice that schools that take music seriously tend to be more academically successful.

So many schools have cut the music classes out of their curriculum. We're trying to fill that gap by teaching the teachers how to educate the kids about their musical heritage.

The majority of the high schools and the public schools in N.Y.C. don't even have band programs. Hip-hop in a lot of ways is an outgrowth of a lack of instruments and a desire to play music, so we can't really fault the kids for that.

But it is equally necessary to consider the implications for a society if there are fewer and fewer young people making music because we are economising on music schools or musical education in schools.

I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice, theory, humanities. And nowadays, music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more.

Music is not a very stable business. It comes and it goes, and so does money, but your education stays with you for the rest of your life. When you have that education, and you have nothing to fall back on, you can get a get a job anywhere.

Music is like the genius of humankind, universal... People who have never really taken the time to get into music, their lives are a lot smaller. Kids deserve the richness and dimension of it in their lives.

I have visited schools that have music programs and those that don't. I see the way the kids act with each other.

Music is an element that should be part and parcel of every child's life via the education system.

Music is such an incredible tool for kids in general. They learn discipline; they learn how to express themselves. You learn math. You learn language. It's the ideal teaching tool, and that's why it's mind-boggling when any school superintendent decides that music is something we can kind of do without.