Joan Rimmer was born in 1918 in London. Her musical skills were immediately evident: by the age of twelve she had gained a scholarship to the Royal College of Music and she went on to become a student there, where she was taught by the well-known pianist Cyril Smith, and where she won the prestigious Hopkinson Gold Medal. At the Royal College she took an early interest in what at the time were little known European composers, such as Bartok, who may have stimulated her interest in folk music and ethnomusicology.

Joan graduated just as the war started and began teaching music at Putney High School and Roehampton Training College, as well as giving piano concerts. In 1948 she began thirty years of freelancing at the BBC. Initially she played piano for the Home Service, made BBC records, including one with Spike Milligan, and produced music manuals for children. By 1955 she had become a self-taught expert on a number of early and remote musical instruments and began presenting programmes on historical musicology covering bagpipes, harps, and, in 1957, a programme on Chinese instruments, the shawm and sheng, with the strapline 'a programme of uninhibited music from many lands, played on unusual instruments'. This epitomizes Joan's approach to her work and life--uninhibited and unusual.

Underscoring Joan's broadcasting was her meticulous academic work. Her approach was forensic, combining comparative anthropological and archaeological...