AboutRoger Greer Expertise I can answer questions on new age, ambient, world, and some sacred or classical music.
Experience I've been a long time collector. I started a community radio station and started a new age radio show on the station, KXCI, in Tucson, AZ.
I currently have a new age/ambient/world show on that station called BRAINWAVES, which airs Mon-Tues, 6-7 AM MST.
Question How did new age music get it's name??????????????????????????????????????????
Answer My easy and quick answer is it came out of the new age movement, you know, psychic powers, angels, crystals, that sort of thing.
but I found several articles that give you LOTS of info, hope it isn't an overload, I found the articles intersting...
So, here goes...
New Age Music
New age music is a category for music that tends to be spiritual and contemplative in nature. It is as much a functional category as a stylistic one. New age music is music for reflection, contemplation, stretching, resting, reading and thinking. Unlike "lite" or "easy listening" music, new age music is composed specifically for these meditative tasks.
New age music tends to avoid heavy rhythms, harsh sounds, complex harmonies, and virtuosic display. The focus of new age music is not on the musician or composer, but on creating music that will meet your psychological needs.
New age music grew out of experimentation by a variety of composers in the 60's and 70's. Jazz and rock musicians reacted to the free-form virtuosic music that was popular at the time, and explored more meditative styles of music.
Steve Roach Structures From SilenceThe most important artist of early new age music is probably Stephen Halpern. Halpern began to make music that was intended specifically for meditation and reflection in the early seventies. He couldn't find a record company that was interested in his music, so he published it himself, and marketed through "new age" stores. These were yoga gyms, health food stores, and places that sold world clothing, incense, and spiritual items. Halpern's music is based around a very long pulse; his phrases tend to be about the length of a slow breath, making his music very relaxing.
Because new age music covers a lot of stylistic territory, both electronic and acoustic musicians have created music that could be called "new age". A lot of new age music is unexceptional; it works as background music because it waters down music, stripping away anything thoughtful or challenging. The best new age music, on the other hand, has expanded the range of musical style. Halpern's work, for example, challenges many assumptions listeners often have about music.
Many other artists have created music that falls into the new age category. Brian Eno's ambient music, especially Ambient 2, is very contemplative. Many electronic musicians have created new age music, including John Serrie, Kitaro, Aeoliah, Steve Roach and Michael Stearns. Some of the music of Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, and Klaus Schulze could be considered new age, also. Paul Horn has created acoustic new age music for 30 years.
and then...this from wikipedia, pretty good article:
New Age music, is a style of music associated with some New Age beliefs. It has its basis in the work of various 1960s European and American electronic and acoustic musicians, and is generally characterisied as being melodic and primarily instrumental in nature.
Partly due to some artists' open affiliation with various New Age beliefs, other artists and bands have specifically stated that they do not consider their own music to be New Age - although their work may be labelled that way by record labels, music retailers or radio broadcasters.
A large percentage of music described as New Age music is electronic and instrumental, frequently relying on sustained pads or long sequencer-based runs. Very long songs, up to 20 minutes and more, are not uncommon. Vocal arrangements and usage of acoustic instruments is less common; in many cases, high-quality samples are used instead of the latter. Recordings of naturally occurring sounds are sometimes used as an introduction to a track or throughout the piece.
These characteristics also apply to other sub-genres of ambient music, and as a consequence during the 1980s the term "new age" came to be used by music retailers and some record companies as a catch-all marketing term applied to many different styles of non-mainstream instrumental music.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Definitions
* 2 Influences and themes
* 3 Alternative terms to "New Age"
* 4 References
* 5 See also
* 6 External links
[edit] Definitions
Some listeners consider New Age Music to be a branch of Electronic Music. Others consider New Age Music to be defined more by the feeling it produces rather than the devices used in its creation. This is a subtle distinction but needs to be mentioned since while much of the equipment used to produce New Age Music is electronic, or computer-based, much New Age Music is also produced using purely acoustic instruments. For example notable New Age artists George Winston, Will Ackerman, Suzanne Ciani and many others specialize in both solo and ensemble performances using "western" instruments such as piano, acoustic guitar, flutes, harps and many others, "eastern" instruments such as sitar, tamboura, tabla; and instruments from all other parts of the world, and of course, the human voice singing in languages from all around the world as well.
There is a significant overlap of sectors of New Age Music, Electronic Music (or Electronica), Ambient music, World music and in that area there are at least three major groups of fans with varying beliefs as to what New Age music is and which artists should be classified as New Age artists. There are more than three viewpoints on this but as a starting point for understanding the varieties, three main points of view can be seen as follows:
* that New Age music is a branch of electronic music that includes melodic, non-dance pieces with miscellaneous kinds of arrangements (as opposed to typical dance styles such as techno and its sub-genres, experimental electronic music that can be non-melodic, noise music, several sub-genres of ambient music, etc). According to this point of view, artists and bands like Michael Cretu's Enigma, Aeoliah, Enya, Clannad, Mike Oldfield, Jean Michel Jarre, Kitaro, Popol Vuh, Steve Roach,Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, and Yanni all belong to the New Age category. This is somewhat problematic for two reasons: first, artists like Enya, Vangelis and Tangerine Dream's Edgar Froese stated that they do not consider their music to be New Age, some of them perceiving "New Age music" as a genre necessarily connected with the religious movement. Second, music by artists like Tangerine Dream and Vangelis is stylistically very varied, with many albums that cannot be classified as New Age (for instance, Vangelis' output includes musical collages and experimental electronic music), and so it is unclear whether it would be fair to label the artists New Age.
* that New Age music is a branch of electronic music which appears mostly on the meditation or relaxation CDs, which are frequently seen in New Age bookshops and music stores. Artists include Anugama, Cusco, David Arkenstone, Deuter, Gandalf, Karunesh, Kitaro, David and Steve Gordon, Software and Space. This definition's accuracy can be questioned, since virtually all the artists mentioned above have numerous pieces that are stylistically reminiscent of meditation CDs.
* that New Age music is electronic music that is melodic, soothing and relatively simple sound-wise, with wide pads, gentle melodies and long tracks. However, since many artists confine themselves to creating only this specific kind of music, it is widely used. According to it, some Vangelis and Tangerine Dream albums can be called New Age music, but the artists can't be called New Age since their output is very varied. Similarly, Suzanne Ciani's music is New Age, but Klaus Schulze's and Enya's is probably not, because both have a very distinct style, different from generic melodic, soothing electronic music.
[edit] Influences and themes
From 1968 to 1973, German musicians such as Holger Czukay (a former student of Karlheinz Stockhausen), Popol Vuh and Tangerine Dream released a number of works featuring experimental sounds and textures build with "electronics", synthesizers, acoustic and electric instruments; their music, referred to as Cosmic music can be regarded as Ambient or New Age, depending on point of view. Later Brian Eno defined the styles and patterns of Ambient in a way that easily merged and co-developed with the styles of many musicians such as Robert Fripp, Jon Hassell, Laraaji, Harold Budd, Cluster, Jah Wobble from late 1970s to today.
Other influences are early electronic music, classical music, ethnic music and world music. The minimalism of Terry Riley and Steve Reich (Indian influenced in the former case) can also be cited as an influence, along with artists like Tony Conrad, LaMonte Young who utilized drones since the early 1960s. Connected to the creation of New Age music is the resurgence of interest in Gregorian Chant during the second half of the 20th century.
The solo ECM performances by artists like Keith Jarrett (especially his record The Köln Concert), Ralph Towner (especially his records Blue Sun and Solo Concert) and Lyle Mays's first eponymous album, are usually thought to be an influence on Ambient/New Age music.
The acoustic solo and group performances by the early Windham Hill artists such as Andy Summers, William Ackerman, Alex de Grassi, George Winston, and Michael Hedges were called New Age for much of the last 30 years.
Popular themes in New Age music include Space and the Cosmos, Environment and Nature, Wellness in being, Harmony with one's self and the world, Dreams or Dreaming and Journeys of the mind or spirit. G.E.N.E. produced a string of albums that described, musically, places like Pacific and Mediterranean islands, and a special CD with recordings of sounds of different oceans. The band Software has several albums that specifically state the electronic aspect of music, such as Chip Meditation, Electronic Universe (both in two parts) and Digital Dance. Titles of New Age songs are frequently descriptive: examples include Principles of Lust (Enigma), Purple Dawn (Anugama), Shepherd Moons (Enya), Straight' a Way To Orion (Kitaro), The Quiet Self (Gregorian), and One Deep Breath (Bradley Joseph).
There may have been some mutual influetiation between New Age and Progressive Rock, as both styles base heavily on experimentation. Also, there are many Progressive groups that make extense use of synthetizers, just like at the New Age movement.
and finally from someplace called lyrics vault
hope this is helpful:
New age
Although more rock than new age in genre the 1967 successful musical Hair with its opening song "Aquarius" and the memorable line "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius" brought the New age concept to the attention of a huge world wide audience.
A large percentage of music described as of New Age genre is instrumental, and electronic, although vocal arrangements are also common. Enya, who won a Grammy for her new age music, sings in a variety of languages, including Latin, in many of her works. Medwyn Goodall, not as widely known, relies mainly on electronic keyboard effects, and includes acoustic guitar as well. To understand this musical category may help shed light on the New Age perspective.
Arguably, this music has its roots in the 1970s with the works of such free-form jazz groups recording on the ECM label such as Oregon, the Paul Winter Group, and other pre-ambient bands; as well as ambient performers such as Brian Eno.
Music labeled New Age often has a vision of a better future, expresses an appreciation of goodness and beauty, even an anticipation, relevant to some event. Rarely does New Age music dwell on a problem with this world or its inhabitants; instead it offers a peaceful vision of a better world. Often the music is celestial, when the title names stars or deep space explorations. Ennio Morricone wrote the entire score for the movie Mission to Mars, and while the credits flash we hear All the Friends, New Age orchestral style.
At its beginings, new age music was closely related to the New Age movement of beliefs. Therefore, its contents were constantly associated to relaxation and mystic matters clearly present on the movement concept itself. Today, it has been widely diversified from that perspective making it virtually no different than most of instrumental music, where there is no association to any particular ideology.
A large percentage of music described as New Age music is instrumental, and electronic, although vocal arrangements are also common. Enya, who won a Grammy for her new age music, sings in a variety of languages, including Latin, in many of her works. Medwyn Goodall, not as widely known, relies mainly on electronic keyboard effects, and includes acoustic guitar as well. Although more rock than new age in genre the 1967 successful musical Hair with its opening song "Aquarius" and the memorable line "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius" brought the "New Age" concept to the attention of a huge world wide audience. Arguably, this music has its roots in the 1970s with the works of such free-form jazz groups recording on the ECM record label such as Oregon, the Paul Winter Group, and other pre-ambient bands; as well as ambient music performers such as Brian Eno. It is often claimed that Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" was the first new age album.
Music labeled New Age often has a vision of a better future, expresses an appreciation of goodness and beauty, even an anticipation, relevant to some event. Rarely does New Age music dwell on a problem with this world or its inhabitants; instead it offers a peaceful vision of a better world. Often the music is celestial, when the title names stars or deep space explorations. Ennio Morricone wrote the entire score for the movie Mission to Mars, and while the credits flash we hear All the Friends, New Age orchestral style.
The titles of New Age music are often illuminating, because the words used by the artists attempt to convey their version of truth, in a few short words. On listening to the music, one may understand the idea within the title. Examples of titles: Bond of Union, Sweet Wilderness, Shepherd Moons, Animus Anima.
The "Concordium" utopian community in Richmond, England promoted vegatarianism in the period 1842-48. They also published two magazines - "The Heatian" and "New Age". Is it any coincidence that throughout the 1980's this style of music achieved more sales in alternative medicine shops than in music stores?
