VIDEO
WorldBeat delves into the world of new age music Windows Media 28K 80K

January 14, 2000
Web posted at: 4:52 p.m. EST (2152 GMT)

A CNN WorldBeat Report

(CNN) -- What do flamenco, Celtic, world and ambient music have in common? Elements of each are regular features on the Billboard new age chart. The diverse range of influences on new age music suggests an issue that has yet to be resolved, though "new age" has been used to describe music for more than 20 years: What qualities, exactly, put something in this genre?

"New age is a genre that the music industry has been trying to identify, itself, for many years," says Barbara Taylor of New Age Voice magazine. "And part of the reason for the confusion is because new age music is so diverse."

WorldBeat talked to a number of artists to see how they define the genre. Their responses were as broad as the category itself. Among them:

Rolf Lovland, of the Irish-Norwegian world music duo Secret Garden: "We are not sure what new age is. It seems like the only thing in common with new age artists is that they don't really have the musical identity that are sort of the same. It's very much labeling by record companies to sort of find a way to present this music."

Guitarist Ottmar Liebert: "For me there's only good and bad music. There's not different music styles. So in my playing, there's a lot of different elements, from R&B to things from jazz, rock, classical elements, flamenco, all sorts of world stuff, whatever grabs my ear."

Rumba flamenco artist Jesse Cook: "If you have a very narrow focus, you think of different types of world music as being very eclectic. But if you sort of pull your focus back until you see the whole planet, it sort of makes sense again -- you know, you swirled them all together and you've just got global music. I hope!"

Download the full report, above, to get more industry takes on this broad classification that includes John Tesh, Yanni and even Enya.