Cat and a couple of others beat me to it: I would list the music that shaped my life, and what I keep coming back to, as what also at times has changed it.

I grew up in a household with classical music, and then my father started taking guitar from Don Firth, and we all were changed by the folk music my father loved. As he learned the cords on the guitar, we ended up absorbing the words to the song. So Dad would be playing, would hit a snag in the words, and I often supplied the line that came next. It got to be a habit for the years I lived at home with my parents. And even as a small child I knew voices I really loved--we listened to Richard Dyer-Bennett records, and I was thrilled to get to attend a concert when he appeared in Seattle at the Opera House. And there were performers in Dad's circle of friends--the earliest I remember are Don Firth and Stan James, the Ashfords, Don McCurdy (I think? played bagpipes and several other instruments), and Maggie Maloso (something else later--Unruh?--but memorable because she was "another Maggie.") And no, I'm not forgetting Bob Nelson, but I remember him more distinctly from a little later in the music learning process.

Maggie Dwyer