Some people have a favourite genre like they have a favourite coffee order — fixed, dependable, always the same. I’m not one of those people.
For me, music is mood. It’s memory. It’s atmosphere and longing and curiosity all rolled together. My listening habits are not about allegiance to a particular genre but about what I need to hear in a given moment — what I want to be carried by, or comforted by, or stirred by.
Some days it’s the stripped-back honesty of folk — Joni Mitchell, Paul Kelly, Missy Higgins — voices that sound like they’re telling the truth. On other days I lean into the dreamy textures of ambient electronica: Tim Shiel, Deep Forest, Portishead. If I’m writing, it’s often solo piano (Elena Kats-Chernin, Satie), or sacred choral music that feels like breath made audible — Pärt, Hildegard, or the monks of Downside Abbey.
There are seasons for singer-songwriters with open hearts. For world music that hums with ancient memory. For gospel and blues, where pain meets resilience. For instrumental jazz and modern classical that seems to bypass the intellect and go straight to the soul.
I’m drawn to emotional resonance more than musical polish. I love music that leaves room for mystery — where you feel something before you understand it. But there is a pattern, if I look closely. What I’m drawn to — often — is music that mixes genres. Music that refuses to stay in one lane.
There’s Hush, the stunning collaboration between Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Ma — one voice, one cello, dancing in and out of each other like old friends who speak different languages but share the same soul. There’s Compassion, where Lior’s prayers meet Nigel Westlake’s orchestral depth in a work that somehow both breaks your heart and stitches it back together. And then there’s something like the Untouchables soundtrack, where Ludovico Einaudi’s meditative piano shares the same space as the driving rhythm of Earth, Wind & Fire — and it somehow works.
I can’t quite explain why these combinations move me, but I know they do. Maybe it’s the surprise. Maybe it’s the way they mirror life — layered, unexpected, richer when people (or instruments, or traditions) meet across difference. Maybe it’s the way something completely new can be born when opposites risk trusting one another.
When genres mix, the music breathes in new ways. It reaches further. It teaches me that beauty isn’t always about polish or purity — sometimes it’s about tension, stretch, translation, listening across unfamiliar lines.
So no, I don’t have a favourite genre. But I do have a favourite kind of music:
Music that feels like a meeting.
Music that crosses borders.
Music that sounds like hope.
The Afterword 
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