The last taboo: Fabian Peltsch on the trail of “New Age”
When my relationship broke up at the height of the pandemic, I suddenly couldn't listen to music anymore. The sound of drums and vocals felt like I was staring directly into the sun. Even my favorite songs seemed like raging noise to me. In trial therapy sessions, I was diagnosed with a depressive episode. A typical symptom is that things that used to bring you joy suddenly mean nothing anymore. The fact that music could no longer touch me felt like I had lost myself. I often lay in my bedroom for hours in complete silence, my hands folded over my heart like an embalmed mummy. Over time, however, I realized that there were quiet sounds that at least didn't irritate me. Through anti-anxiety playlists on Spotify, I discovered artists like Aeoliah, Steven Halpern, Suzanne Doucet and Liquid Mind, which the streaming service had classified as "New Age." Many tracks were little more than permeable veils. They contained none of the euphoric energy that I had previously sought in music. Even before my depression, I had Brian Eno when I couldn't sleep. But this music went a step further. The sweet synth sounds were more like acoustic blankets than "acoustic furniture". The covers showed angels or dolphins or dolphins with angel wings floating off into rainbow-colored universes. The titles were "Intergalactic Lullaby" or "Reiki Hands Of Light". In the past, I wouldn't have given such a concentration of clichés 30 seconds. Now I let myself be bombarded with it for hours.
New Age is probably the last taboo for a music nerd like me. No other genre is so discredited because of its esoteric sound aesthetic. Brian Eno once said that the problem with New Age is that it no longer contains any trace of evil. Lounge music for the gates of heaven.
"If you want to make music that relaxes people, you call it ambient. If you want to sell rubbish to people with no taste, you call it New Age," is how American music curator and New Age expert Douglas McGowan describes the consensus that still prevails about New Age. And yet I couldn't deny that this music did something to me. It soothed me. It gave me hope: that the pain would one day subside. That I hadn't lost music completely. Was it because of my longing for inner peace that I was suddenly open to musical sedation and spiritual promises?
I began to read enlightening literature at random, from Helena Blavatsky to Eckart Tolle. I found many promises: the dissolution of the ego. A life in the light. The omnipresence of the divine. The realization that only the here and now exists and that death is an illusion. I was particularly fascinated by the prospect that my pain could be a gateway to awakening. The American Pema Chödrön, who became a Buddhist nun after a traumatic breakup, had written an entire book about it. I had discovered the title while self-medicating with Google: "When everything collapses".
But in the end, all the teachings remained just words. It was only the immediacy of New Age music that gave me an inkling that there might be a deeper truth behind them. What was music anyway? As a music journalist, I had been writing about musicians and musical trends for years without even touching on this question. Were the New Age musicians right when they saw music as a spiritual tool? Did they have knowledge with which they were actually able to heal people - to heal me? How Suzanne Doucet became the gatekeeper of the New Age genre
Still without a clue as to who I could sell an article about this stigmatized genre to, I contacted the New Age musician Suzanne Doucet, who lives in California. Her story impressed me immediately. In the 1960s, she was a German teen superstar. Staged as a teenager with a bob, she landed number one hits such as the Ronettes cover “Sei mein Baby”. Alongside showbiz greats such as Hans Clarin, she hosted music and children’s shows and introduced the German-speaking audience to a newcomer named David Bowie Everyone who had a TV in Germany, Austria and Switzerland knew her face. At the end of the 1970s, the Tübingen native, who was now singing self-written chansons, decided to emigrate to the USA and devote herself entirely to this instrumental music, for which the term New Age was just beginning to establish itself. In LA, in the hip Melrose district, she opened the world's first record store specializing exclusively in New Age, whose customers included celebrities such as Prince and Sylvester Stallone. Doucet became one of the genre's most important gatekeepers. She networked and released artists on her "Isis" label and was commissioned by Hollywood to design a New Age category for the Grammys. What had she seen in this music that made her give up her career in Germany? After a brief exchange of emails, we arranged to meet on Zoom.
"I had traveled halfway around the world at that time. It was time for me to start my journey inward," Doucet tells me from her home in the Hollywood Hills. She began her spiritual path as a child. Her father, Friedrich-Wilhelm Doucet, was a student of Carl Gustav Jung and had written numerous books on dream interpretation and parapsychology. "He was a free spirit. We talked a lot about these things." read more in the article Searching for "New Age" clues: Is the whispering music better than its reputation? continue ▶ Page 2