My friend Jan Fairley, who has died of cancer aged 63, trained as a musicologist. Her knowledge of and passion for music from Spain and Cuba, Chile and Venezuela, enriched British understanding and helped win UK audiences for Latin artists as they began to tour Britain in the 1980s and 90s. A fine journalist, Jan wrote for the Guardian and the Scotsman, fRoots and Songlines magazines, and made documentaries for BBC Radio 4, her focus always being on Latin culture and human rights.
From 1990 to 1994 Jan presented Earthbeat, a world-music radio show, for Radio Scotland. From 1995 to 1997 she was director of the Edinburgh book festival and is credited with attracting noted authors, infusing a strong Latin element and ensuring that human rights were on the agenda. Jan also compiled many CDs of Latin music, most recently The Beginner's Guide to Flamenco, a triple-CD set issued in April 2012.
Jan was born in Birkenhead, Liverpool, and grew up in Ellesmere Port. She studied at Essex University, then settled in Temuco, Chile, in 1971. She taught literature at Temuco University and while there was joined by her boyfriend, Stephen Platt. They married in 1972. The couple witnessed the military coup that overthrew the government of President Salvador Allende in 1973 and found themselves in danger. Warned that the supporters of General Augusto Pinochet were looking for them, Jan and Stephen had to be smuggled across Chile to the British embassy in Santiago, where they took refuge. The crushing of democracy that Jan witnessed in Chile ensured that she would spend the rest of her life championing human rights and refugee organisations.
Back in the UK, she completed an MPhil in Latin American studies at Oxford University, followed by a PhD in ethnomusicology at Edinburgh University. Settling in Scotland, Jan lectured widely, most often at the Liverpool University, wrote and, after separating from Stephen, raised her three children. She approached everything she did with a fierce commitment and great humour, always speaking her mind, unafraid to upset while befriending people from across the globe. She loved to sing and dance and to walk Scotland's coast. At the time of her death she was working on a book about Cuba's female musicians.
She is survived by her sister, Mary; her brother, Rod; her children, Rachel, Tom and Fran; and two grandchildren.
