ABSTRACT
New age is sometimes scorned as ‘yuppie muzak’ (Gammond, 1991), in part because of its appeal amongst relatively well-off and liberally educated listeners. Hall claims new age to be a postmodernist musical style, ‘due to its eclectic, constantly shifting character and confusion of boundaries; its spirit of playfulness, taste for irony, and textual looting; its aggressive multiculturalism; and its anti-intellectualism yet devotion to learning’ (see Hall, 1994:17-18, for an elaboration of these claims). Other observers regard the genre as musically
a heavily conservative one, leaning towards the formulaic, and oriented toward private introspection.
