The term "New Age music" was first used in the early 1980s. It was first heard on radio stations that catered to progressive musical tastes. The "New Age" moniker referred to instrumental music with relaxing, meditative qualities. The presence of sound effects borrowed from nature or a spiritual connotation from the performers helped solidity New Age as an established genre and soon record companies were using the term in their own marketing.
As the scope and audience of New Age has grown, the definition had been refined over time. Today, New Age music is still associated with spiritual, inspirational or relaxing musical styles but also includes certain instrumentation configurations, such as the use of harps and synthesizers, collected sounds from nature and the influence of various world music styles.
New Age music originated in the rampant musical experimentation that took place in the 1960s. The appearance of synthesizers saw the birth of electronic music, which would later figure prominently in New Age. Additionally, new musical forms were introduced to American audiences through the formation of fusion styles or borrowed instrumentation, like the appearance of the sitar in rock or pop music.
As the trend toward new progressive or liberal lifestyles continued into the 1970s, musicians began to explore new musical forms with the express purpose of aiding the expansion of consciousness. Music that was meant to enable meditation or spiritual reflection was still without a name, but began to grow in popularity among certain demographics. (As with most new music, the early New Age scene was dominated by young people.)
Once New Age music received a definition (albeit an imperfect one), its popularity continued to grow. Most record stores began to designate a New Age section, though the types of music filed under this broad heading varied from store to store. Likewise, radio stations claiming a New Age affiliation were frequently known to play smooth jazz and world music, along with strict New Age compositions designed to inspire the appropriate New Age response in listeners.
The spread of cable television in the late 1980s and early '90s furthered the cause of New Age music. Many networks devoted a channel to New Age music, which was often played with accompanying images: usually images of the natural world.
The first figures in New Age music were Popol Vuh, Edgar Froese and Holger Czukay. These German musicians worked in experimental forms that were referred to as "cosmic music" but would lay the groundwork for New Age.
In the late '70s, producer Brian Eno began developing musicians under the heading of "ambient music." Some of these acts, including Jon Hassell, Harold Budd and Robert Fripp, would also become New Age figures.
Progressive American musicians like Ralph Towner and Keith Jarrett, working for the ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music) record label produced works that influenced New Age as well as other experimental forms.
New Age continues to draw influences from an assortment of musical genres and styles. Today's popular New Age acts include Dean Evenson, Jami Sieber, Enya, Bocarus, Hypnotica, Anna Wise and Bill Leslie.
A significant subset of New Age music, known as healing music, is intended as a form of therapy for listeners. Healing music carries with it the New Age mantle of reducing stress and enabling meditation, but is also thought to assist in the process of physical healing. One leading figure in healing music is Steven Halpern, whose experiments as early as the 1960s laid the foundations for healing music. Halpern's "Chakra Suite" album, released in 1975, helped bring healing music into the mainstream. Today, healing music by Halpern and others is used in hospitals, offices, therapy centers and even commercial centers with the intent of soothing people who inhabit the space where the music is heard.