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Associations, in fact, are the key to understanding New Age music. Perhaps mindful of Stravinsky's famous dictum that music is emotionally neutral, many contemporary composers of serious music have sought to expunge all extramusical references from their work. New Age music, on the other hand, is frankly, if often banally, evocative: of waterfalls, wheatfields, even the mysterious but benign resonance of deep space. All nature is grist for its mill. Former Bebop Jazzman Paul Winter, who is now making New Age records, lists his inspirations as he "African mbira (a hand-held instrument played with the fingers or thumbs) as well as the sounds of the humpback whale, eagle and the timber wolf." If much of the music does not actively demand attention in the way that Beethoven or even the Beatles do, it does require some imagination on the part of both composer and listener.
New Age embraces a surprising variety of musical styles. Most regressively Californian are the environmental soundscapes of Steve Halpern, 39, a New Age pioneer with 35 albums to his credit. Then there are the grandiose synthesized symphonies of Jean-Michel Jarre (Oxygene) and the film scores of Vangelis (Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner). There are the strongly defined melody and deceptive, stutter-step 5/4 rhythm of Jobson's piano waltz Disturbance in Vienna, which also turn up on his new synthesizer album Theme of Secrets. There are the down-home guitar serenades of Folk Veteran Leo Kottke. And there is Hwong's dreamy, Asian-inflected music, which in her album House of Sleeping Beauties weds such disparate instruments as the shakuhachi (a traditional Japanese flute) and the synthesizer to create a delicate, free-flowing hybrid of est and West.
Its appeal is similarly diverse. New Age is the perfect music for washing one's BMW, which accounts for its stereotyping as yuppie Muzak. But, notes Hugh Ashcraft, owner of a record store in Charlotte, N.C., "we have a wide range of people buying this stuff. There's a good number of old hippies, and mothers and grandmothers." Jenny McEwen, a Charlotte nurse, listens to New Age music on Sunday nights because "it dissipates the dread of Monday mornings. I find myself actually looking forward to the week."
The best New Age music, however, feeds a largely unarticulated hunger for an alternative to juvenile rock 'n' roll and formula pop. As much of rock has degenerated into pallid imitations of Led Zeppelin, and the wallets and midsections of the baby boomers have fattened with age, new vistas in pop music have opened up. Major labels such as Warner Bros. and CBS, which releases the recordings of Harpist Andreas Vollenweider, are issuing New Age recordings, and Gramavision has signed up New Age Musicians Steve Halpern and Kitaro.