New-age music
It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation,[1] and reading as a method of stress management[2] to bring about a state of ecstasy rather than trance,[3][4] or to create a peaceful atmosphere in homes or other environments.
[16] Irv Teibel's Environments series (1969–79) featured natural soundscapes, tintinnabulation, and "Om" chants and were some of the first publicly available psychoacoustic recordings.
[18] 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;[10] it may be acoustic, electronic, or a mixture of both.
[12][13][19] The two definitions typically associated with the new-age genre are: 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".
[24] Some composers like Kitarō consider their music to be part of their spiritual growth, as well as expressing values and shaping the culture.
[26] 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.
[22][31] 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, Tangerine Dream and Enigma.
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...
Although its composers include musicians prominent in the rock avant-garde, it is marked by a meditative aesthetic whose goal is often creative anonymity.
A laid-back synthesis of folk, jazz and classical influences, it is called, by rough convention, New Age music.
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.
[37] Similarly, pianists such as Yanni[38] and Bradley Joseph[39] use this term as well, although they use keyboards to incorporate layered orchestral textures into their compositions.
Initially, it was of no interest to the musical industry, so the musicians and related staff founded their own small independent recording businesses.
[12][41] New-age music was influenced by a wide range of artists from a variety of genres—for example, folk-instrumentalists John Fahey and Leo Kottke, minimalists Terry Riley, Steve Reich, La Monte Young, and Philip Glass, progressive rock acts such as Pink Floyd, ambient pioneer Brian Eno, synthesizer performer Klaus Schulze, and jazz artists Keith Jarrett, Weather Report, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Paul Horn (beginning with 1968's Inside), Paul Winter (beginning in the mid-1960s with the Paul Winter Consort) and Pat Metheny.
[42][28][9][16][43][44][45] Tony Scott's Music for Zen Meditation (1964) is sometimes considered the first new-age recording,[46] but initially it was popular mostly in California, and was not sold nationally until the 1980s.
[22] Another school of meditation music arose among the followers of Rajneesh; Deuter recorded D (1971) and Aum (1972), which mixed acoustic and electronic instruments with sounds of the sea.
Her A Rainbow Path (1984) embraced Halpern's theory of healing music from that time with women's spirituality, and she became one of the most popular new-age sacred-music artists.
[47] Mike Orme of Stylus Magazine writes that many key Berlin school musicians helped popularise new-age.
[48] Paul Winter's Missa Gaia/Earth Mass (1982) is described as "a masterpiece of New Age ecological consciousness that celebrates the sacredness of land, sky, and sea".
[52] By 1985, independent and chain record retail stores were adding sections for new age, and major labels began showing interest in the genre, both through acquisition of some existing new-age labels such as Paul Winter's Living Music and through signing of so-called "new-age" artists such as Japanese electronic composer Kitarō and American crossover jazz musician Pat Metheny, both signed by Geffen Records.
On Valentine's Day in 1987, the former Los Angeles rock radio station KMET changed to a full-time new-age music format with new call letters KTWV, branded as The Wave.
[57] In 1995 some "new-age" composers like Kitarō, Suzanne Ciani and Patrick O'Hearn moved from major to independent record labels due to lack of promotion, diminishing sales or limited freedom of creativity.
