Participation is easily obtained with Latin chant.
The industry does have some influence on who gets other awards. With the Mercury Prize, they don't. Jon comes from the business, but his heart is still very much in the music. Currently, we have about 12 major names that have said they want to be a part of MUDDA.
We want to embrace the younger crowds and get them to embrace instruments.
Our music is consumer. It's made to be played with, it's made to have fun.
The problem with fine art is that in most cases people have to make a special excursion to go and look at it: they can't afford to own it. So it isn't really part of their life in the way that music can be.
Why there aren't people out there willing to have fun playing rock 'n' roll. I just don't get it.
Anything that encourages people to pick up an instrument and play, I'm fully behind.
I have always been involved in my school's music program.
Music isn't just for professionals. We delegate all of our music and our dancing and our art to professionals. It's silly. We should be doing our own dancing and drawing.
I think live music is really, really important. And I think it's very important to do together. It's much more fun to play to music together than the one person listening to their lone iPod Shuffle. I think it's an amazing way to build community and have children do things that are funded that's not a videogame.
Music left my life for a while, to be honest. It wasn't that I didn't like it, but you know, I'm not really a solo player.
I ultimately do still feel like an outsider, and I do feel, actually, I'm more in the world of music because of how much I participate with musicians - in all aspects, not just clothes.
We get so many kids telling us that they've taken up the violin or cello. It's really special, and it wasn't really our intention in the beginning.
I'm very interested, for instance, in music in education - getting young people not only to listen to, but participate in the music that I write. I consider this one of the most vital aspects of my work.
It's good to see more young people playing instruments.
I've been part of five different bands in my time.
I wrote so much about fandom and participation for NPR that I eventually realized my most fertile way of participating in music is to actually play it, at least in a way that made the most sense to me.
Music is too important to be left to professionals.
There's still not as many women in music as men, and I don't really know why. I don't have the answers. I do wish there were more women that played music.
I never wanted to be called a fan, and that's no disrespect to any artist who calls them fans, but I never wanted a boundary in between the people listening to my music and me - for them to feel like I'm doing something that they can't do.
I think that's a powerful thing, to be able to engage your audience and let them put some of themselves into the music.
I get interested in the various ways that music is being done in the culture, and some of it I like thoroughly enough to want to learn about it. The way I have been successful at doing that is to become part of it.
Why would you want to stand there waving a stick when you could be playing an instrument?
The song 'Hymnostic' is kind of a gospel song, and that song is really fun to sing with as many people as possible. And anyone can sing it, you know?
For me, if the music is good, whether the artist is famous or unknown, I love being part of the music and contributing what I can to the bass end.
