Webpage Thecurrent.org has an article called Is New Age Music Making A Comeback? It is a result of the I Am The Center – Private Issue New Age Music in America 1950-1990 compilation, and it seems like New Age Music suddenly has a degree of hipster cred. I guess New Age music was so out that it is now hot again. Anyway, here is the start of the article. It is a great read:
New age music hasn’t been a mainstay of my adult life—by the time I was in college in the 1990s, the genre’s popularity was decidedly on the wane—but last December I had the occasion to revisit my childhood new-age fandom when I attended a St. Paul concert by George Winston, the pianist who’s often described as “new age” but who prefers to call his music “rural folk.” Douglas Mcgowan, producer of the new compilation I Am the Center, clarifies that debate by making a case that new age music is folk music.
I Am the Center harks back to the pre-Yanni days when new age was an indie phenomenon, recorded by artists who sold their work at performances, via mail order, and through the national network of new age bookstores. “New age was the first genre to emerge after the 1970s home recording revolution,” Hearts of Space host Stephen Hill told the New York Times.
The Times article, headlined “For new age, the next generation,” argues that new age is making a comeback among members of the MacBook generation who are revisiting the same electronic trails that were blazed by Brian Eno and other musicians who—whether they considered themselves “ambient,” “classical,” “new age,” “folk,” “prog,” “jazz,” or what have you—were interested in exploring an ambient, often improvisatory, aesthetic.
Read it here.