New Age Music Research The Dynamics of a Cultural regarding the values it represents, the Struggle in Academia: The way it is marketed, and its artistic value. When we began studying the cultural Case of New Age Music conflict being waged around NAM, we 1 Research discovered that the emotions, ideologies, politics, and balances of power that Omri Ruah-Midbar characterize this struggle are also reflected Netanya Academic College, in the arena of academic study. Academic Zefat Academic College, research is perceived as neutral, objective, and as providing only scholarly analysis. Israel However, academia is actually an additional arena for the cultural struggle, Marianna Ruah-Midbar echoing the same claims. Zefat Academic College, In this article, academia is the object University of Haifa, of the research. We examine the way an Israel academic struggle is conducted over a cultural issue, and highlight the processes Abstract that form norms, standards, and truths. Music is not just about sounds. It is a political We focus on the characteristics of the act. Likewise, the academic discourse about music struggle, namely preferred values, plays a role in cultural polemics. This paper deals manners of thought, and ways of with the characteristics and dynamics of the expression—both for NAM’s defenders academic struggle over a research topic that is the subject of a cultural conflict—New Age music. An and opponents. A unique challenge in in-depth analysis of the academic discourse and conducting such a study is keeping in its polemic dynamics leads to an identification of mind that we the authors belong to the the struggle strategies, and a distinction between field being examined. different dispositions and paradigms among the We will begin with a presentation researchers. Our conclusions demonstrate the of NAM and the broad cultural context penetrability of the academic sphere by cultural from which it emerged—New Age fashions, as it is not rational considerations and culture. Later, we will address the various factual findings, but rather trends, habits, socio- academic discourses that are at the core cultural or professional affiliations, and ideologies 2 that motivate and “advance” research. of our study (see Fig. 1 ): research of New Age culture and of popular music, and cultural criticism. The latter constitutes Introduction a theoretical infrastructure for this n recent years New Age music article, as will be elaborated on in the (NAM) has become a widespread and methodological paragraph. The main familiar musical category—on radio body of the article is a description and Istations, in music stores, at festivals and analysis of the academic discourse about at musical performances. Along with NAM. Finally, we will summarize the the massive inculcation of NAM into the findings and discuss their implications. cultural market, a lively debate has arisen Cultural Analysis 11 (2012): 67-90 © 2012 by The University of California. All rights reserved 67 Omri & Marianna Ruah-Midbar New Age Music Research Age is listed among twenty one musical super-categories (such as Rock, Jazz, and Classic),4 with twenty four “subgenres and styles.”5 NAM’s widespread cultural presence is expressed in extensive marketing activity, festivals and performances, on websites and in databases that feature music and video-clips. For example, the Amazon website features a NAM category among twenty categories such as Rock, Classical, Jazz, Opera, and Vocal music. While the New Age category contains 86,358 items, Blues contains 85,946 items, Classical 382,311, and World Fig. 1: New Age music research as it 6 relates to relevant academic discourses music 600,680. Among the many NAM singers and artists, suffice it to mention a few New Age Music central examples. Enya is one of the most NAM is a vocal and instrumental musi- famous New Age artists and singers. cal style, which developed in the second She began to become famous in the mid- half of the twentieth century as minimal- 1980s as a performer and composer of ist music meant to create a particular World music and Irish music, through atmosphere, usually tranquil and medi- the documentary series The Celts, which tative. Among its first harbingers one was broadcast in Great Britain by the may recall Brian Eno (Hibbet 2010, 299), BBC, and which traced Celtic culture Mike Oldfield, and Wendy Carlos (Ber- in Europe (a popular subject of interest man 1998, 256, 259). In the 1980s NAM in New Age culture). Enya’s success entered public awareness and began to grew in the 1990s, and her album A Day be an accepted category in the market- Without Rain sold 15 million copies in ing language of record companies. In the 2000. In the 1990s, her albums were rated early 1990s some people identified NAM several times by Billboard, a magazine as the one of the most significant compo- that bases its ratings on sales and radio nents of the music industry, although it broadcasting in the U.S.A., in their list of also became the most disputed musical the 200 albums of the year.7 In 2001, she genre (Zrzavy 1990, 33). was awarded the annual international NAM is a super-category that includes prize in Monaco at the World Music 3 many musical sub-categories such as Awards by the International Federation ethnic, World, Trance, ambience, space, of the Phonographic Industry, where she healing, meditation, nature, minimalist, was declared the singer whose sales had Muzak, environmental, and so on. For been the highest in the world that year.8 instance, at AllMusic Internet site, a well- Enya won many more awards, including known online music guide service, New four Grammies and the esteemed 68 New Age Music Research Academy Award nomination from the As part of the struggle surrounding American Academy of Motion Picture NAM’s cultural status, some researchers Arts and Sciences in Hollywood. and artists deny that NAM is a musical Another example of a New Age genre. Thus, in the New Age Encyclo- musician who achieved international pedia, NAM is presented as a “market- acclaim is Yanni, a pianist who plays ing slogan,” and it is explicitly indicated NAM (of the Classical sub-category). He that it is “not a musical category” (Aidan publicized a video-clip of a performance 1990). The musician Wendy Carlos, who of his in Athens in 1993, Yanni Live at the tends to be identified as the creator of the Acropolis, which was very successful, and first New Age album (Sonic Seasonings), was considered one of the bestselling uttered the same claims (Berman 1988, music videos of all time. Yanni was 259). awarded many platinum and gold The current study does not deal with albums, and performed in dozens of the question regarding the existence of countries in the world for millions of the musical genre called NAM, nor trace fans. Billboard rated Yanni’s concert its historical roots, nor judge the quality tour, following the release of his album of the music. We accept the existence of Ethnicity in 2003, as the fourth largest the phenomenon as a cultural fact: there concert tour in the world that year. In are musicians who create NAM; there February 2011 Yanni’s album ranked 91st are companies that market it; there is in the world on the Billboard 200 list. an audience that consumes it; there are Ryan Farish is an American producer artists associated with it. In our view, as and Disc Jockey of electronic NAM. One such a cultural phenomenon it is worthy of the peaks of his career was when a of research. Furthermore, the denial of fifteen-year-old girl made a video-clip for NAM being worthy of research is what soldiers in Iraq to his composition Pacific especially stimulates our study. Wind, which she entitled “Remember Me.” The clip had 30 million views and New Age Culture th was rated 48 in April 2008, in the search One cannot write about NAM and the category of “most watched YouTube dispute that surrounds it, or its social 9 video of all times.” and ideological characteristics, without These examples indicate the success describing its broader context as part of of NAM and its penetration into the the New Age movement. The New Age mainstream of contemporary popular movement emerged through a range of music. Notwithstanding its great counterculture phenomena in a continu- distribution, NAM has remained ous process that came of age in the 1970s, controversial in almost all its aspects. such as alternative medicine, medita- Which artists are New Age artists? What tion, Far East doctrines and practices, are the musical attributes of the genre? admiration of indigenous cultures, neo- Is it even worthy of being defined as a shamanism and neo-paganism, spiritual musical genre? What are its historical feminism, consciousness and self-help roots? Is it music of high quality? What is groups, spiritual psychotherapies, and the secret of its success? channeling (Hanegraaff 1998; Heelas 69 Omri & Marianna Ruah-Midbar New Age Music Research 2008; Roof 1999; Sutcliffe and Bowman to the upper middle-class sector, and 2000). are characterized by relatively higher Along with external factors such education (Kemp 2003). as fashion accoutrements, the New Among the most established main- Age movement is characterized as a stream institutions is academia, with rich world of ideas and values, and as which the New Age has a complicated having a typical discourse (Ruah-Midbar relationship. New Age culture is ambiva- 2006). Inter alia, it is characterized by lent towards Western science, whereas sanctification of the self and a call for full on the one hand, it opposes knowledge realization of human potential, a holistic authorities that are external to the indi- approach, opposition to authorities and vidual (Hammer 2001), but, on the other institutions including modern Western hand, it is interested in creating a bridge science, preference for experiential between science and religion by means of epistemology over rationalism, an presenting holistic worldviews that use encouragement of the externalization pseudo-scientific terminology (Hane- of emotional expression, an accent graaff 1998).