My career in brief:
I am an experienced freelance mostly working in music. I have sung since the age of four (the gamut from Gilbert and Sullivan, Bach and Grand Opera to madrigals, musicals, acapella womens group Sedenka and Sacred Music) and can read scores and transcribe music With a first degree in Literature and Languages I first got into music writing through meeting members of the 'new song' movement when teaching in Temuco, Chile between 1971-3. I returned to the UK to do an M.Phil in Latin American Studies at Oxford. I then did a PhD in Ethnomusicology at Edinburgh University on the composing and performances of Karaxú!, a Paris based group of Chilean exile musicians.

I have researched extensively in Latin America and Spain since the 1970s particularly with political singer-songwriters (from Rubén Bladés to Victor Jara to Chico Buarque), Cuban music and also flamenco. Since the late 1980s I have worked as an editor, notably as a member of the editorial board of the Cambridge University Press journal ‘Popular Music’ and also for a period as full time member of the ethnomusicology editorial team of the The New Grove Dictionary (1998-2000)

As a music writer and critic I have contributed chapters to ‘The Rough Guide to World Music’ Vols. I and II, The Rough Guide to Spain, The Rough Guide to Andalucia, The Rough Guide to Bolivia, The Insight Guide to Chile. I have worked as feature writer and music critic for the key music magazine fRoots since the mid-1980s (today aka Christine Charter); and for world music magazine Songlines since the first edition in Summer 1999. If you flash my name into google you will find many of my reviews pop up.

I have made cultural documentaries for BBC World Service radio, notably on Finland in the early 1990s as well as a 12 part world music series 'Ports of Call'. I pioneered world music on BBC Radio Scotland the weekly world music programme Earthbeat for four years in the early 1990s and have made many music/cultural series and documentaries for BBC Radio 3, Radio 4 and World Service. My last documentary was ‘Chile Heart and Soul’ for Radio 3 in September 2003 to explore the state of Chilean culture 30 years after the coup d’état of 1973.

I write on world music and on occasion review classical music for various outlets notably The Scotsman (during summer 2004 I worked as one of their classical music critics). I have also written for The Herald, Sunday Herald, Scotland on Sunday, The Independent, The Guardian. The Telegraph.

I have done lots of teaching and seminars. I have contributed to various academic books, most recently the chapter: “‘Ay Díos, Ampárame’ (O God, Protect Me): Music in Cuba during the 1990s, the ‘Special Period,” in Island Musics, ed. Kevin Dawe, Berg 2004, pp. 77-99

“The ‘local’ and ‘global’ in popular music”, Part III – Debates, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, ed. Simon Frith, Will Straw, John Street, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 272-290

I have done research for television programme on the Edinburgh Festival and written two commentaries for BBC4 TV Celtic Connections music programmes.

I sing, dance flamenco, tango and salsa, swim regularly, ride a bike when not driving a car and love to walk.