“New Age is either soothing mood music for the millennium or the aural equivalent of a tepid bath.” This was the verdict of New York Times writer Stuart Elliott in a 1996 article.
Since then, the “soothing mood music” has not only shaped the new millennium, it has also broadened its reach. Often associated with yoga, healing, ambient music and meditation, New Age music seems to be everywhere. But what exactly is it?
New Age Music Definitions
New Age music is a broad genre that has been influenced by various musical styles like classical, electronic, ambient, folk and world music. This definition by The Free Dictionary takes the genre’s origins into account: New Age music is a “type of gentle melodic popular music originating in the US in the late 1980s, which takes in elements of jazz, folk, and classical music and is played largely on synthesizers and acoustic instruments.”
According to Oxford Dictionaries, New Age music is a “style of chiefly instrumental music characterized by light melodic harmonies, improvisation, and sounds reproduced from the natural world, intended to promote serenity.” Cambridge Dictionaries Online’s definition takes the last characteristic further and stresses the effect of listening to New Age music; it is a “type of music which is intended to produce a calm and peaceful state of mind”.
Characteristics of New Age Music
Looking at the various definitions, one can identify the following common attributes of New Age music. It is
- gentle, melodic, light, serene and peaceful,
- has a calming effect on its listeners,
- combines electronic and acoustic elements and instruments,
- is influenced by folk, jazz, ambient music, classical music, world music and nature.
Unlike mainstream popular songs that range from anywhere between three to five minutes, New Age tracks can be quite long - often up to 30 minutes. They also include repetitive elements and melodies to achieve their intended calming, meditative and almost hypnotic effect. Nature sounds like rain, birds chirping, a river flowing, the sound of waves and more are added to remind listeners of their own connection to nature and the origin of all sounds.
Origins of New Age Music
According to Paul Heelas' book The New Age Movement (Blackwell, 1996), New Age developed out of the counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s, then known as the “Age of Aquarius” – most popularly used in the 1969 Broadway musical “Hair” that seems to undergo a revival every two decades. Though theories about a “New Age” and the term itself go back to the 17th century, it wasn’t until the mid-seventies that it was widely used for the spiritual movement known today.
The musical genre developed parallel and started appearing as a label in independent and chain record stores in the mid-eighties. While some New Age artists and musicians embrace and incorporate New Age beliefs, others do not. Today, New Age music sections in stores can be broad and include a variety of artists and styles from world music to nature sounds and yoga and meditation music. In fact, according to some estimates, there could be around 70 sub-genres of New Age music.
New Age Music Artists
Rather than focusing on the term and trying to pinpoint what New Age music is or is not, it might be easier to look at a few New Age artists. Jazz artists like Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny influenced New Age music early on; so did the synthesizer beats of Pink Floyd, Enigma and Brian Eno. Though not a New Age singer per se, even Mike Oldfield's rock album Tubular Bells was one of the first albums classified as New Age.
Gregorian chants experienced a revival in popular music thanks to the New Age genre that today features a whole chanting subgenre with ancient languages like Sanskrit, Latin, Hebrew and Celtic languages. Enya is known for this; also New Age singers Deva Premal and Canadian word painter Marcome. Some artists, like pianist Yanni for example, prefer other term to classify their music like “contemporary instrumental” but can’t avoid being stuck in the New Age category in record stores.
New Age music is so far reaching today that regardless if one chooses to actively listen to it or not, chances are one will have listened to it many times without knowing: at doctor’s offices, at de-stress exercises, in the office, in cafés – New Age music seems o be everywhere because of its calming effect and unobtrusive nature.
Simone Preuss - Simone is a freelance writer, editor and translator who decided to go solo after a successful career in publishing. That was more than ...
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