You’ve always spoken so positively about your parents. What life skills have they given you?

I would sum them up in that my father, who was Nigerian, gave us our identity and our mother, born in Ireland, politicised us. When we moved to Berkshire in the 1970s, my younger siblings were sometimes stopped by the police on their way home from school and being brought to the police station on “SUS” – it was horrific and very wrong. It crushed my father, but he couldn’t go to the station himself for fear that he too would be arrested. So my mother would go down every time, have the argument until they stopped arresting my teenage siblings for fear of having to deal with her.

My mum was something else. When she was being educated by the nuns in Ireland and forced to recite Latin, she’d put her hand up to ask what the text meant, and instead of answering her they beat her. Every day she still went in and asked the same question until they stopped beating her and finally explained it to her. She instilled us to question, she was a disruptor and I definitely got that from her. My daughter, Phoebe Hugh, is exactly the same and she was recently listed in Forbes 30 Under 30 in Europe. My dad was very trusting and believed in mankind; he was wise, kind and innocent. They both had an incredible sense of humour and had a gift for putting a different spin on things. To give you an example, in reaction to the infamous signs in the UK that read ‘No blacks, No Irish, No dogs’ they would look at each other and say, ‘well, we don’t have a dog so let’s see if we can get in’.

You’re a big advocate for the group participation style of music education. In your opinion, what are the main benefits?

Today we are surrounded on a daily basis by kids who don’t know how to communicate with each other; music breaks down this barrier. Things happen in music and no words can explain it. When one is being steeped in a world where you’re communicating through music and harmony, it cannot be underestimated. There needs to be more cooperation, understanding and tolerance in today’s society and music helps to create that. These skill sets and mindsets are at the core of what happens when people play music together.

I was playing in a recorder ensemble when I was six and it was amazing. From this little wooden tube with holes, I learned so many things. A small group of kids formed at lunchtime who just wanted to play together. We were given the recorder and a sheet of music, and from that, we had instructions for our left and right hands, when to breath and the sound itself happening all at the same time. All those senses were being sparked off, stimulated and pulled into action just to play one note on the recorder. The processing starts the second you look at that dot on the page and when you’re all working together to make that happen, you’re using so much of your psyche and most importantly you’re not just listening to yourself. You’re learning to listen to those either side of you and figuring out whether you’re fitting in on the same note.

After a while, they gave us different recorders and it was then that I discovered harmony by playing my first bassline – I was hooked. There is no other thing on this earth that a child could learn that betters that experience. Regardless of whether you become a chef, plumber, doctor, you’ll be better at it if you’ve studied music. It should be the first subject that everyone is taught in school, not the extracurricular afterthought.