When I was 11 or 12, we had a bagpiper come to our school to perform. I remember our class standing outside of the cafeteria and the fellow there with his pipes and in his full costume. People joke about how obnoxious bagpipes are, but I swear when he started playing it was like something woke up inside of me. I stood there very quietly, listening so intensely and trying to understand what that music was saying to me while all the other kids were around me giggling and holding their ears and making faces. I don't remember the song but I remember how it made me feel. I've loved Celtic music ever since.

There's been other songs that have had that sort of effect on me at various points in my life. In the classics it was Beethoven's Ode to Joy, Handel's Messiah, the Erlking, Carmen, Mozart's Magic Flute and many, Noelenn Brenhedd (sp?) as performed on the Celtic Spirit CD gave me the shivers the first time I heard it, gorgeous acappella song. Stairway to Heaven and Gallows Pole by Led Zepplin and Music of the Night and Think of Me from Webber's Phantom of the Opera on the less traditional side of things. Just recently I've fallen in love with Idumea on the Cold Mountain soundtrack and Down In The River on the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack. I can remember hearing She's Like the Swallow the first time at a St. Patrick's Day festival in Roanoke and being completely enchanted with it.

There's been many others...so many moments like that, where a song comes on and compells you to listen to it with your entire being. Good music never really ever stops having that effect on you, I believe