Richard Moyle Tonga recordings

Professor Richard M. Moyle is a New Zealand ethnomusicologist, educator and author specialised in the music and oral histories of the Pacific and First Nations Australia.

Moyle began recording in Samoa and American Samoa between 1966 and 1969 during field work for his Masters and Doctoral degrees at the University of Auckland. He later expanded his research to the Kingdom of Tonga, Lau Islands in Fiji, Niue, Northern Cook Islands, Takuu Atoll in Papua New Guinea, and Central Australia.

After completing the University of Auckland’s first PhD in ethnomusicology in 1971, Moyle has held teaching positions at Indiana University, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and Griffith University Queensland. For eight years he was Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in Canberra, publishing a trilogy of books on the music of Central Australia with wife Linden Moyle. Returning to Auckland in 1985 to take up an appointment in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Auckland, he went on to become Director of the Archive of Maori and Pacific Music in 1993, followed by Director of Pacific Studies in 2007, until his retirement in 2010.