David Hughes is Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London, where he served two periods as Head of the Department of Music. He has spent over nine years in Japan, much of it involved in the folk song world as researcher, but often also as performer and judge at song contests. His other main research interests and publications involve music transmission, oral mnemonics cross-culturally, Central Java (gamelan), traditional street musicians and grammars of music. Most recently, he has co-edited with Alison Tokita, and contributed to, The Ashgate Companion to Japanese Music (2007).