For me, maybe every decade has its album or artist. The first album I ever purchased (way back in 1971) was Led Zeppelin 3. It was loud, it was intense, and that voice of Robert Plant raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Listening to Led Zep again after many years I was struck by how similar the quality of his voice is to a lot of flamenco singers. In the 1980s, it was U2 and Joshua Tree. Perhaps the perfect album? This was also my first taste of Daniel Lanois, whose solo work I also adore. In the 1990s it was first the , Caetano Veloso specifically, that were so very important to me. This was my first big gulp of music sung in languages that I couldn't really understand. But it was an eye (ear?) opener to hear how rich pop music was in other countries and what marvelous alternatives there were to the English-language music out there. In the mid-90s, I literally stumbled onto flamenco and, again, it was a voice that drew me in. This time, it was Camaron de la Isla, one of the greatest flamenco singers of all time whose voice reached out from the speakers and got me in a death grip. That encounter was quite literally a life-changing experience. Now it is two Hong Kong singers, music pioneers and truly world-caliber artists--Leslie Cheung and Anthony Wong Yiu Ming--whose music has rocked my world. Cantonese anyone??? Now, practically in my dotage, I'm taking up learning Cantonese, reading about Hong Kong cinema, watching hundreds of movies I'd never heard of 2 years ago and learning about a culture that I never knew anything about before. Oh, and did I mention the music these two artists produce(d)? The English-speaking world is truly impoverished because we don't know the music of these two extraordinary individuals. This is probably it for the rest of my life. I think it is going to take me that long to get a handle on the language, the history and the culture of Hong Kong and greater China. I think how, in some ways, my musical journeys reflect some greater cultural zeitgeist. I started with what was the dominant world culture in the 70s, Anglo-Saxon. From there, I discovered the riches of Latin America and Spain in Spanish and Portuguese and now I have moved on to China, which is most certainly going to be playing a much larger role on the world stage in the decades to come. I can think of no better way to discover our world than through the culture of its music. People fight wars over many things, music isn't one of them.

Jagged lil pill. Alanis Morisette.

That is a deep question that requires some thought, but I'd say Thriller is up there. I don't think anything else inspired me more to be the fantastic dancer that I once was.

i have organized my life around the principles and teachings of Roxette's 'Joyride'....