Do you remember the soundtrack of your life?

WHAT is the soundtrack of your life? I’m travelling as I write this, and the overnight plane rides are great for catching up with music that you don’t regularly listen to.

- ASHLEY GREEN-THOMPSON

The infotainment system has a playlist section with old hits, and I have to stop myself from singing out loud and dancing in the aisles to Abba or the Carpenters.

I've explored the great hit songs of Elvis and Boney M and Stevie Wonder, not to mention the cool cats of Motown. But it’s always been about Bob Marley and the Wailers during my teenage years.

Not only did Bob provide deep political education and motivation — he helped me with my love life when I made a mix tape of reggae love songs for my then-girlfriend living in Durban.

She might deny this, but I think it added to her decision to marry me.

The other night on the plane, I caught a documentary film about Janis Ian, a '60s folk singer from the USA who made the headlines in the ’60s as a 13-year-old composer of Society’s Child.

That song was about interracial love in racialised America, and launched the career of this Jewish daughter of progressive civil rights campaigners.