Dr. Jane Freeman Moulin
Professor Emerita of Music
Jane Freeman Moulin (Ph.D., UC-Santa Barbara; M.A., U.C.L.A; B.A. cum laude, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa) is Professor of Ethnomusicology and Chair of Undergraduate Studies in Music at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Her educational initiatives have resulted in several innovative additions to the UH Music program and, in 1997, she was awarded the prestigious Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Teaching.
Moulin’s research focuses on the musical traditions of French Polynesia, including changing transmission patterns related to formalized music instruction and the relationships of music to dance.. Primary researcher for the UNESCO Territorial Survey of Oceanic Music in the Marquesas Islands, Moulin has been a Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, University of Auckland, University of California Arts and Humanities Center, and UH Humanities Center. She has served as adviser to the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts Folk Arts Program, Education Chair for the Hawai‘i Association of Music Societies, and as coordinator and teacher in the Violin Outreach Program at Voyager K-6 charter school. She was elected to the Council of the Society for Ethnomusicology and is presently on the editorial board for the Pacific Islands Monograph Series. She lectures and conducts workshops internationally (Tahiti, New Zealand, Japan, France, Italy, Lithuania).
A former professional dancer in Tahiti’s foremost traditional dance troupes, Moulin is the author of The Dance of Tahiti (1979), a five-volume catalog for the Territorial Survey of Oceanic Music: Music of the Southern Marquesas Islands (1989), Music of the Southern Marquesas Islands (1995), and the co-authored work Music in Pacific Island Cultures. Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (2011), in addition to numerous encyclopedia and journal articles, including entries in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, and International Encyclopedia of Dance and articles in the Yearbook for Traditional Music, Galpin Society Journal, Contemporary Pacific, Société des Études Océaniennes, Journal of American Folklore,and Pacific Arts. Her Marquesas research brought special commendation from the Marquesan cultural organization Motu Haka and was awarded First Prize for the “Best Work on the South Pacific and Australasia” in the international Thèse-Pac Competition. Current research interests include Tahitian music and dance as cultural consumption, hymnody in French Polynesia, and the soundedness of dance.