New age music

New-age is a genre of music intended to create artistic inspiration, relaxation, and optimism. It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation, and reading as a method of stress management to bring about a state of ecstasy rather than trance, or to create a peaceful atmosphere in homes or other environments. It is sometimes associated with environmentalism and New Age spirituality; however, most of its artists have nothing to do with "New age spirituality", and some even reject the term.

New-age music includes both acoustic forms, featuring instruments such as flutes, piano, acoustic guitar and a wide variety of non-Western acoustic instruments, and electronic forms, frequently relying on sustained synth pads or long sequencer-based runs. Vocal arrangements were initially rare in the genre, but as it has evolved, vocals have become more common, especially those featuring Native American-, Sanskrit-, or Tibetan-influenced chants, or lyrics based on mythology such as Celtic legends.

There is no exact definition of new-age music. An article in '' Billboard'' magazine in 1987 commented that "New Age music may be the most startling successful non-defined music ever to hit the public consciousness". Many consider it to be an umbrella term for marketing rather than a musical category, and to be part of a complex cultural trend.

New-age music was influenced by a wide range of artists from a variety of genres. Tony Scott's ''Music for Zen Meditation'' (1964) is considered to be the first new-age recording. Paul Horn (beginning with 1968's ''Inside'') was one of the important predecessors. Irv Teibel's '' Environments'' series (1969–79) featured natural soundscapes, tintinnabulation, and " Om" chants and were some of the first publicly available psychoacoustic recordings. Steven Halpern's 1975 ''Spectrum Suite'' was a key work that began the new-age music movement.Wright, Carol
''Spectrum Suite''—Steven Halpern
AllMusic.

Definitions

New-age music is defined more by the use and effect or feeling it produces rather than the instruments and genre used in its creation; it may be acoustic, electronic, or a mixture of both. New-age artists range from solo or ensemble performances using classical-music instruments ranging from the piano, acoustic guitar, flute, or harp to electronic musical instruments, or from Eastern instruments such as the sitar, tabla and tamboura. There is also a significant overlap of sectors of new-age music with ambient, classical, jazz, electronica, world, chillout, pop, and space music, among others.

The two definitions typically associated with the new-age genre are:

* New-age music with an ambient sound that has the explicit purpose of aiding meditation and relaxation, or aiding and enabling various alternative spiritual practices, such as alternative healing, yoga practice, guided meditation, or chakra auditing. The proponents of this definition are almost always musicians who create their music expressly for these purposes.Steven Halpern, ''New Age Voice Magazine'', June 1999 issue To be useful for meditation, music must have repetitive dynamic and texture without sudden loud chords or improvisation, which could disturb the meditator. It is minimalist in conception, and musicians in the genre are mostly instrumentalists rather than vocalists. Subliminal messages are also used in new-age music, and the use of instruments along with sounds of animals (like whales, wolves and eagles) and nature (waterfalls, ocean waves, rain) is also popular. Flautist Dean Evenson was one of the first musicians to combine peaceful music with the sounds of nature, launching a genre that became popular for massage and yoga. Other prominent artists who create new-age music expressly for healing or meditation include Irv Teibel, Paul Horn, Deuter, Steven Halpern, Paul Winter, Lawrence Ball, Karunesh, Krishna Das, Deva Premal, Bhagavan Das, and Snatam Kaur.
* Music found in the new-age sections of record stores. This is largely a definition of practicality, given the breadth of music classified as "new age" by retailers that are often less interested in finely grained distinctions between musical styles than are fans of those styles. Music that falls into this definition usually cannot be easily classified into other, more common definitions, but can contain almost any kind of music; it is more of a marketing slogan rather than musical category.

Debate and criticism

Stephen Hill, founder of '' Hearts of Space'', considers that "many of the artists are very sincerely and fully committed to New Age ideas and ways of life". Some composers like Kitarō consider their music to be part of their spiritual growth, as well as expressing values and shaping the culture. Douglas Groothuis stated that rejection of all music labeled as "new age" would be to fall prey to a taboo mentality, as most of the music belongs to the "progressive" side of new-age music, where composers necessarily do not always have a New Age worldview.

However, it is often noted that "new-age music" is a mere popular designation that successfully sells records. J. Gordon Melton argued that it does not refer to a specific genre of music, but to music used for therapeutic or other new-age purposes. Kay Gardner considered the label "new age" an inauthentic commercial intention of so-called new-age music, saying "a lot of new age music is schlock", and how due to record sales, everyone with a home studio put in sounds of crickets, oceans or rivers as a guarantee of sales. What started as ambient mood music related with new-age activity became a term for a musical conglomeration of jazz, folk, rock, ethnic, classical, and electronica, among other styles, with the former, markedly different musical and theoretical movement.

Under the umbrella term, some consider Mike Oldfield's 1973 progressive rock album ''Tubular Bells'' one of the first albums to be referred to under the genre description of new-age. Others consider music by Greek composer Vangelis and general modern jazz-rock fusion as exemplifing the progressive side of new-age music. Other artists included are Jean-Michel Jarre (even though his electronic excursions predate the term), Andreas Vollenweider, George Winston, Mark Isham, Michael Hedges, Shadowfax, Mannheim Steamroller, Kitarō, Yanni, Enya, Clannad, Era and Enigma.

However, many musicians and composers dismiss the labeling of their music as "new age". When the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album was first created in 1987, its first winner, Andreas Vollenweider, said, "I don't have any intention to label my music... It's ridiculous to give a name to anything that is timeless". Peter Bryant, music director of WHYY-FM (90.9) and host of a new-age program, noted that "I don't care for the term... New-age has a negative connotation... In the circles I come in contact with, people working in music, 'new-age' is almost an insult", that it refers to "very vapid, dreamy kinds of dull music... with no substance or form or interest", and that the term has "stuck".

Harold Budd said, "When I hear the term 'new-age' I reach for my revolver... I don't think of myself as making music that is only supposed to be in the background. It's embarrassing to inadvertently be associated with something that you know in your guts is vacuous." Vangelis considers it to be a style that "gave the opportunity for untalented people to make very boring music". Yanni stated that "I don't want to relax the audience; I want to engage them in the music, get them interested", and that "New age implies a more subdued, more relaxed music than what I do. My music can be very rhythmic, very energetic, even very ethnic." David Van Tieghem, George Winston and Kitarō also rejected the label of new-age artist. David Lanz said that he "finally figured out that the main reason people don't like the term new age is because it's the only musical category that isn't a musical term". Andreas Vollenweider noted that "we have sold millions of records worldwide before the category new age was actually a category", and shared the concern that "the stores are having this problem with categorization".

Ron Goldstein, president of Private Music, agreed with such a standpoint, and explained that "Windham Hill was the hub of this whole thing. Because of that association, new-age has come to be perceived as this West Coast thing". However, Windham Hill's managing director Sam Sutherland argued that even the label's founders William Ackerman and Anne Robinson "shied away from using any idiomatic or generic term at all. It's always seemed a little synthetic", and they stopped making any kind of deliberate protests to the use of the term simply because it was inappropriate. Both Goldstein and Sutherland concluded that the tag helped move merchandise, and that new-age music would be absorbed into the general body of pop music within a few years after 1987.

''The New York Times'' music critic Jon Pareles

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