Space music

According to Stephen Hill, co-founder of a radio show called Hearts of Space, the term is used to describe music that evokes a feeling of contemplative spaciousness.^[4][5][6] Hill states that space music can range in character, the sonic texture of the music can be simple or complex, it can be instrumental or electronic, it may lack conventional melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic features, and may be less concerned with the formal compositional schemes associated with other styles of music.^[7][8] Hill proposes that space music can be found within a wide range of genres.^[7][9] Space music may have influences from western classical, world, Celtic, traditional and experimental music.^[10][11][12]


Hill believes that space music can evoke a "continuum of spatial imagery and emotion",^[13] which can be beneficial for introspection, and for developing, through a practice of deep listening, an awareness of the spatiality of sound phenomenon.^[14] This type of psychonautic listening can produce a subtle trance-like state in certain individuals^[15][16][17] which can in turn lead to sensations of flying, floating, cruising, gliding, or hovering.^[18][19]


Hill states that space music is used by some individuals for both background enhancement and foreground listening, often with headphones, to enable states of relaxation, contemplation, inspiration, and generally peaceful expansive moods; it may promote health through relaxation, atmospherics for bodywork therapies, and effectiveness of meditation.^[20] Space music appears in many film soundtracks and is commonly played in planetariums.^[21]


According to Hill space music is an eclectic music produced almost exclusively by independent labels and it occupies a small niche in the marketplace, supported and enjoyed by a relatively small audience of loyal enthusiastic listeners.^[22]

Definitions[edit]

AllMusic defines space music as a subgenre of New Age music.^[23] Similarly, mainstream retailer Barnes & Noble, independent online music retailer CD Baby, and RealNetwork's music download service Rhapsody all classify space music as a subgenre of new-age music.^[24][25][26] Rhapsody's editorial staff writes in their music genre description for space music (listed as a subgenre of new-age music) that "New Age composers have looked upward for inspiration, creating an abstract notion of the sounds of interstellar music."^[27]


Stephen Hill, co-founder of the radio show Music from the Hearts of Space (syndicated nationally in the United States on National Public Radio) uses the phrase "contemplative music, broadly defined" as an overview to describe the music played on his station, along with the term "spacemusic".^[10] He states that the "genre spans historical, ethnic, and contemporary styles",^[5] and that it combines elements from many cultures and genres, blended with varieties of acoustic and electronic ambient music, "woven into a seamless sequence unified by sound, emotion, and spatial imagery."^[10] In his essay "New Age Music Made Simple", and in introducing the 200th broadcast of the Hearts of Space radio program, Hill has referred to space music as a sub-category of New Age.^[19]


Hill's partner Anna Turner (co-host and original co-producer of Music from the Hearts of Space) wrote in her 1989 essay entitled "Space Music" that "New Age Space music carries visions in its notes; it is transcendent inner and outer space music that opens, allows and creates space... this music speaks to our present moment, to the great allegory of moving out beyond our boundaries into space, and reflexively, to the unprecedented adventures of the psyche that await within."^[28]


Gerardo "Pkx" Martinez-Casas, original host, producer and creator of KUSF's 90.3 FM, University of San Francisco in California, "Moondance (The Beyond Within)" 1981– 198?, described space music as electronic, environmental and spiritual fine art fashion cosmic sounds as an aid and tool for cultural, contemplative, meditative, social and spiritual awareness.^[29]


In her book The New Age Music Guide, author, editor and music critic P. J. Birosik classifies space music as a subgenre of new-age music,^[30] as does Dallas Smith, writer, teacher and recording artist in his essay New Age Jazz/Fusion.^[31] Steven Halpern, noted recording artist and workshop leader writes that space music has been considered a synonym for new-age music: " 'Space' is a vital dimension of new-age music; so much so that one of the early appellations for the genre was simply 'space music', referring both to its texture and to the state that it tended to evoke in the listener."^[32]


John Diliberto, the host of the radio show, Echoes, and creator of WXPN's Star's End, has stated that space music is related to electronic music,^[8] as has Bay Area musician, composer and sound designer Robert Rich, who considers space music to be a combination of Electronic music influences from the 1970s with world music and "modern compositional methods".^[33] Forest, host of Musical Starstreams refers to space music as a separate genre along with Ambient music, and others including dub, downtempo, trip hop, and acid jazz in the list of genres he calls "exotic electronica".^[34] Similarly, WXPN Radio's Star's End, programming ambient music since 1976, on its website lists space music as a separate genre, along with Ambient, new-age, and others.


Steve Sande, freelance writer for the San Francisco Chronicle considers space music to be "Anything but New Age," and writes that "spacemusic [is] also known as ambient, chill-out, mellow dub, down-tempo."^[35] In the same article, he describes Stephen Hill's "Hearts of Space" spacemusic program as streaming ambient, electronic, world, new-age and classical music.^[11] In contrast to this, according to author and National Endowment for the Arts researcher Judith H. Balfe, Billboard editor Jerry Wood describes space music as one of several "genres within the genre" of new-age music.^[36]