Steve Conte: If I Ruled The World

Steve Conte is a musician known for his memorable guitar work as a member of New York Dolls, as well as his collaborations with Japanese composer Yoko Kanno on the soundtracks to several hit anime series

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All rockers would be able to appreciate jazz If I can appreciate all types of music, including punk rock, garage rock, metal and jazz, others can too! I’ve actually heard rockers say, “Jazz just sounds like a bunch of wrong notes!” No, fool: it’s another language. If you only speak English and you hear someone speaking Norwegian it’s going to sound like gibberish to you. People need to open their minds to other languages, cultures—and music. It makes the world a richer, more vibrant and colourful place.

We would save the arts in schools We’ve got to stop cutting our arts programmes for kids in schools. Every member of society benefits from having kids being creative and thinking outside of the box. From music to visual art to writing, these programmes help children develop hand-eye coordination, creativity, concentration, self-expression and risk-taking. So we need to stop the book banning and imposing one set of religious beliefs on kids, and get them thinking for themselves.