What Is New Age Music?

For those of you that have been pondering this question, hopefully this post will add a bit of clarity. If you’re just visiting for the first time on account of discovering Daniel Kobialka on Pandora, Tidal, Spotify, Bandcamp or any other number of platforms, please allow us to provide a bit of background.

So what exactly is new age music? One can find any number of descriptions and/or definitions online - here’s our position on it. New age music can take form in just about any genre of music. LiSem considers any type of music that brings a calm, meditative, or healing state to be new age music. Many consider the term to merely be a marketing ploy, a descriptor that’s employed to sell (stream?) records. And within the vast definition of new age musical styles, there are a plethora of artists that are considered new age, but abhor the designation. Acoustic instruments, electronic instruments, electroacoustic instruments, and more are welcome to the fold.

The first recognized new age recordings are widely considered to have originated in the mid 60s with an even bigger push in the mid to late 70s. Artists like clarinetist Tony Scott, Steven Halpern, and even our own Daniel Kobialka were largely instrumental in the beginning stages of this movement. Other notable artists include Laraaji, George Winston, Mark Isham; and the expertly curated release from Light In The Attic records “I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age In America 1950-1990”, takes the listener on a guided four decade journey.

For further reading and insight, we would like to point you to New Age Music Guide. Here one will find near exhaustive coverage of the genre.