New Age

While the roots of the New Age movement are centuries old, both its spirit and its music are focused powerfully on psychic and sonic possibilities that lie just over the horizon. Probably one of the few true crossover hits — and who knows whether it migrated from new-age consciousness into pop, or the other way around — is Enya’s waltz time-trip through the fairytale seas of “Caribbean Blue.” The GRAMMY®-winning synth player and guitarist Kitaro spins a spider-web reverie that spans both East and West in “Caravansary.” And former jazzman-turned-music healer Steven Halpern casts his third eye back to his very first album, reworking his hypnotic magic on the legendary “Spectrum Suite” and taking it a step beyond in “2nd Chakra: Keynote D - Chakra Suite (Solo Electric Piano Plus Synths).”

In Next Steps, we’ll travel from the Emerald Isle to Twin Peaks and beyond.

Not everybody who plays new-age music is necessarily a new-age artist. As a for instance, song thrush Julee Cruise first came to fame working with director’s David Lynch’s favorite composer, Angelo Badalamenti. Their collaboration on the butterfly-wing airiness of “Falling” turns up as the theme to the surreal murder mystery series Twin Peaks, a story more rooted in old rage than new age. Classical composer Harold Budd, on the other hand, is (along with occasional co-collaborator Brian Eno) one of the cofounders of the’70s ambient- music movement, and he conjures up a wistful, almost otherworldly soundscape in “The Room of Ancillary Dreams.” Finally, Irish harper Aine Minogue draws upon bedrock-deep Celtic folk roots while casting her musical net out to a distant realm in “Spirits of the World.”

In Deep Cuts, we’ll hear from some angels, a guru, a nun, and more.

At its most basic level, new-age music is not so much for listening as for absorbing, as you almost unconsciously invite its healing power right into your very core. Deepak Chopra, best known as “the poet-prophet of alternative medicine,” rounds up an all-star backing cast for the second volume of A Gift of Love, which features the techno-fied feline slinkiness of the album’s subtitle, “Oceans of Ecstasy.” The trio known as Angels of Venice (because they play like angels and come from Venice, California) invoke an ancient, trance-like ambience — think Xena on a vision quest — in “Queen of the Sun.” And former Dead Can Dance chanteuse Lisa Gerrard summons celestial grace in the propulsive and dreamy “Go Forward.”

Hard to believe that “new age” is really a pretty old concept, going back, at least, to poet William Blake in 1809. But after a long period of hibernation, the idea of a sort of metaphysical spirituality resonated with a generation of flower children. At the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, new agers not only had their own communes, politics, and religion(s), but they also developed a new style of music. Some find it spacey, others ethereal. Some call it mystical, others merely calming. But there’s no better way to quiet those jangled post-millennial nerves than to tap into the gentle power of the new-age sound. And even if you can’t tell a chakra from a cowbell, no worries — we’ll be your musical spirit guides, taking you from Enya to Kitaro, from Timothy Leary to Deepak Chopra, and beyond.