New Age Music

I'm quite fond of New Age music myself. A lot of it is quite beautiful. It always frustrated me that so much of my otherwise innocuous music collection didn't "check" at school because it qualified as new age. It is great stuff to study to or to play quietly to fall asleep. My "Ambient" station on Pandora gets the most use of any of my stations.

I've been listening to (and own a lot of CDs of) so-called "New Age" music since about 81 or 82. For a few years, I didn't even know why it was so labeled, but as I was browsing the New Age section in a large music store, I came across a number of albums which actually purported to get the listener in the right frame of mind for meditation and such. Even though I had already heard some of that music and liked it, I avoided it specifically because of its stated purpose.

If you evaluate the artists on the various labels considered to be "New Age" (e.g. Private Music, Windham Hill, Narada, etc.), you will find that a large number of them don't even like their music being classified as such (and some specifically disclaim the label), but because such music is often relaxing, contemplative, soft (though not always), and melodic, it gets classified as "New Age" anyway by the major record chains in their stores.

I've just taken the stance of avoiding any artists or albums that are specifically connected with spiritism and other new-age beliefs, and I don't worry about the rest. It's not the artists' fault if their music is connected incorrectly, and just because music may be very suited to a particular activity or idea doesn't make it so. For an example of something similar, see the way music from Enya is filed. I've seen it in World, New Age, Pop, and Rock categories, because as an artist she has achieved some measure of popularity, but her music resists easy classification.

You will find both good and bad music by "New Age" artists just as you will in about every music category. If an artist is specifically writing something against God, or promoting other religion, then I personally try to avoid all of that. Anything else, I evaluate on its own, without worrying about a category that may not apply, or how other people describe it. Most generalizations are completely useless, and I treat them as such.