Finally, in 1975, Steven recorded Spectrum Suite, a first in New Age healing music. The album to date, now titled Chakra Suite, has sold over 700,000 copies. Since its inception the genre has exploded with hundreds of musicians contributing. Steven Halpern is an internationally acclaimed composer, recording artist, author, researcher and sound healer.

Steven’s music is recommended by physicians and therapists for use in hospitals, hospices, healing clinics, yoga and massage centers, homes and businesses around the world. In a recent telephone interview with Steven I learned much about the history, composition, intent behind and emergence of the field of New Age music.

I welcomed Steven and thanked him for agreeing to the interview.

Steven: My pleasure. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Diana: I have some questions for you, and please feel free to embellish upon my questions in any way that fits for you. With the recording of Spectrum Suite in 1975, you are often said to be the father of contemporary healing music. What influences brought you to compose in this unique genre?

Steven: The end of 1960, I began to experience meditating at a redwood grove and that essentially initiated me into the industry of what I call healing music. I played this music in meditation groups and in concerts starting in the end of 1969. People always asked me where they could get music like that and since there was no place, they asked me if I could make them a personal copy. So, I did that and it got very quickly to be that there were way too many requests.

After being encouraged by Dr. Stanley Krippner and Dr. John Lilly, world famous scientists and researchers, to objectively and scientifically research the phenomenal responses that people were subjectively reporting, I went back into graduate school, did some landmark research studying the effects if this new music on consciousness and healing, comparing it to the most relaxing classical music.

In a nutshell, what we found blew away the best classical music. In terms of relaxation, what I was composing was much more relaxing and healing. We had biofeedback studies to support that and to demonstrate that. However, there was no way to get the music onto recording in the early 70s because the technology for record duplication was in control of the major record companies.

That all changed, the end of 1974 when the first independent recording company and record plant opened in the San Francisco area. I was in their studio on January 4, 1975 and recorded my first album, and suddenly found that I had started the first independent, New Age record label out of necessity.

The other thing that happened was that this made it easier to respond to people who said they were always looking for music to help them meditate, and relax and to support them in doing yoga. Many albums might have one song that was good for that, or a couple of songs, but you couldn’t just put on the entire album as a soundtrack for these kind of spiritual life style activities. A lot of people like myself are high-stressed, type-A individuals, and we were looking for something that would be effective, enjoyable, inexpensive and legal.

Healing music was just what the doctor ordered. It turns out, as I discovered as I really got into the research, for thousands of years mankind has understood the healing powers of music. But for the last five hundred years that’s fallen by the wayside as music for entertainment really pushed the therapeutic uses of sound and music into the background.

What I saw when I brought my first album into stores was that there was an audience looking for music that nurtured body, mind, spirit that wasn’t just looking for music for entertainment. My initial album that dealt with balancing the chakras as a very profound yet simple psycho-technology for enhancing coherence, getting people into an alpha brainwave state and really assisting bodies in healing themselves, kicked off the entire field that became known as New Age, and the sub-genre has always been healing music.

Diana: That’s a wonderful history of your development of this field.

Steven: If I may just add a quick note here. I had been a professional jazz musician, in to world rhythm and blues. I had a strong background in improvisation and playing with very powerful rhythms. What was so unique about this new music was it did not have any central rhythmic core, unlike most all other music at the time. Indeed, this is part of the secret that allows listeners to let go of preconceived modalities of responding to music. And with some of the other things I developed in my approach to composing music went beyond the traditional forms and rules of classical, pop and jazz composition. And just followed my muse followed the music into a more free, flowing context. And, that’s part of what people respond to when they respond to the music, that the intention is there to consciously create a soundtrack that resonates at a higher frequency and serves at a higher level of bringing harmony and peace to body, mind, spirit.

Diana: Excellent. Just a few years ago you re-mastered Spectrum Suite into Chakra Suite. Why was it important to do that?

Steven: Two reasons, one, even though we recorded on the best analog equipment of the day, everything is now on CD. When the master tape was first transferred to the digital format we used the state of the art. Well, the state of the art has gotten so much better. And when I heard how much better we could make my existing recording, I was guided not to re-record it but to re-master the music. And, it sounds even more luminous and the notes have a three dimensional quality to them that really, really is state of the art now.

The other thing was that in 1999, as yoga became so popular around the country, more people understood the concept of what chakras are. It was time to change the title to reflect that. Actually, the very first title, in 1975, was Chakra Suite, but people didn’t know what they were and stores wouldn’t take it. They thought it was some flavor of chocolate or something else. Then, 25 years later, with Spectrum Suite, even though I was talking about electromagnetic spectrum and relating colors and sounds and chakras (the 7 vital energy centers of the body), it was time to get a more descriptive and accurate title and cover. That’s what we brought forth, and interestingly sales have gone up about 800% since the title shifted to reflect the change in culture.

Diana: Amazing. I can testify that it is very powerful in its healing qualities.

In recent months and in months ahead, you have been and will soon be a presenter at a number of sound healing conferences. Is the field suddenly expanding? If so, do you have an explanation for why?

Steven: Yes and yes. The field is expanding and there are several factors: As with any rapidly expanding field, there are people who really know what they are doing and there are people who don’t. There are people just jumping on the bandwagon leading to this concept as the flavor of the month. That’s one aspect.

On the other hand, there’s many, many people who’ve taken workshops and who are having experiences in their own lives who are bringing in some aspect of sound and music into their massage, into their body work practice, into their psychological counseling, and they’re looking for more information because there’s been nothing in the traditional college or any school curriculum that teaches how valuable sound and music can be in respect to health and healing.

So, in other words, it’s an idea who’s time has come. As more and more people get involved and open up to the concept then more people say, ‘let’s put together a conference’ rather than just have one workshop on sound in the whole weekend.

That’s how I got started. I was that one person who was talking about the healing power of sound and music and had the field pretty much to myself for 10 years. Many people have been inspired by that and have started doing their own work. Now there’s many other individuals who are doing workshops on sound and healing and writing books.

For people who in the Bay Area knew my first book, “Tuning the Human Instrument” from 1977, and my best seller in 1985, “Sound Health,” many things people are writing now were found, sometimes word for word, in those earlier books. It’s really a great feeling to see how many more people are tuning in to this concept of this most ancient of the healing arts.

Diana: How is the upcoming San Francisco conference, Globe Sound Healing Conference, http://www.SoundHealingCenter.com, unique and what will your topic be?

Steven: My topic has been “Uncovering and sharing some secrets of sound healing.” In fact, that’s been the name of my workshops, or some variations of that, for about 15 years.

Part of the unique aspect for people in Northern California is that this is local. It’s also sponsored by the Globe Institute and their affiliated sound healing curriculum. This is one of the only degree-granted, accredited organizations, if not the only one, in the country. They are bringing together a number of speakers who are leaders in the field. Particularly for those of us who live in the Bay Area, it’s an incredible opportunity to see and hear and meet people who are doing some leading edge research, advancing the field, as well as just rehashing what other people have come up with and repackaging things.

In San Francisco, the real deal will be in attendance. There will be opportunity to interact and ask questions. It’s like taking a college semester program all in one weekend with all the guest faculty. It’s really an extraordinary opportunity.

Diana: Do you have anything to say about the research they speak of in the publicity materials regarding physiological responses to music and sound?

Steven: I’m not sure which research you’re talking about. There’s a lot of research starting to come out. The important reality is understanding that there has been so little current research because it takes money. There are a lot of people who don’t want you to know how effective and powerful the right music and the right sounds can be. For instance, if you have a headache and it’s caused by stress, my approach is to decrease the stress and relax the body with sound and music and the headache goes away. Well, the pharmaceutical industry would rather you take one of their pills, so they are not going to fund research on the healing properties of music.

Most of the music and sound healers I know are not independently wealthy so they have a hard problem. Because of the economy, there aren’t a lot of grants available.

So there’s been much less contemporary research. In fact, when I did my research in the early 70s, there were no studies using biofeedback. That is, galvanic skin response and brain wave monitoring and kirlian photography activity —photographing the aura as it responds to music. I put that concept on the map. I was the first one to do that, and to date there are still very few studies that have really involved some of the leading edge of quantum physics and consciousness as my research did 30 years ago.

The Bay Area was a hot bed of progressive scientists. I had a chance to interact directly with them as well as people on the East Coast and around the world that really got me positioned to take the best of the music world, interface it with the early pioneers in quantum science and quantum physics.

Now, whether you’ve seen “What the Bleep” or “The Secret,” what we’re all talking about is resonance and entrainment, which is a major aspect of the law of attraction. What “The Secret” is talking about. Hopefully, as a result of conferences like this, we’ll see more research. But in the meantime people have used sound for healing, archeologists and musicologists tell us, for over 2500 years. So, why wait for someone to study music in a laboratory when you yourself can validate the beneficial properties in your own life?

The important part is to choose the correct music. A lot of people have read the little article on the Mozart Effect and think that any Mozart music played by anyone is going to have the same effect. Not only do they get dumber instead of smarter, they find that that’s kind of a red herring. Quality in music counts. You have to make wise choices. You have to educate yourself as a consumer of music.

Learning how to orchestrate your own instrument is a skill. It’s learned by experience. We do a lot of things intuitively, but many people mistake liking music for arbitrarily saying that’s the same thing as delivering therapeutic and beneficial doses of healing just because you like something.

Diana: In your music you have so many albums directed for specific issues. Did you create the music intuitively? How did you know which music was going to help in the area, for instance, for quitting smoking, or relaxation for massage, or for caregivers?

Steven: Well, let me clarify 2 things. I am not claiming, nor should anyone be making claims that any music will cure or heal a specific disease. What I’ve always put forth is that the music assists self-healing. The modality that I focus on is evoking the relaxation response. It’s a measurable, predictable and demonstrable phenomenon. The easiest markers are breathing deeply and slowly. Right away you know if you listen to music with a fast beat you won’t be able to breathe slowly and you know that it is not going to be useful for healing. As Dr. Herbert Benson pointed out, the relaxation response is fundamental to most all other healing outcomes.

So that’s the first way that I decide. If the music is not relaxing to me, I don’t put it out in the world. I test it. and test it then with other people, and only when I get confirmation on all other levels does one of my albums get released into the market place.

Now, the albums that you were mentioning are a specific sub-genre of music and subliminal affirmations. These target individual outcomes and goals, because the scripting, the words that I write and speak, again I use the relaxed state, as the individual is most receptive to positive input and the words go directly into the subconscious mind. Even though your conscious ear doesn’t hear the words, your subconscious mind does and responds accordingly. It’s the most effective way of getting positive input into our consciousness, because sometimes if you hear the words, your intellect and rational mind will resist that input. Then there’s a cognitive dissonance that goes on and you don’t get the results you want.

I’ve been involved in research with subliminal audio programs for over 30 years and its clear that its much more than just a placebo effect. I’ve tested the same music with 3 different scripts. In fact, the most dramatic one was using the same piece of music, a 5 minute song on piano that I would have, in one case music to put people to sleep, and in another case music to wake people up. In fact, I recorded in the studio in Palo Alto in the 1980s, so it’s a local story. The engineer didn’t mark down what we recorded. It was the same piece of music and just said subliminals, and the tapes got scrambled. I didn’t know which piece was which. I locked him in the control room, played the music and watched his coffee consumption. When he was listening to the music that turned out to be the music with the affirmation to encourage sleep, he was up to his third cup of coffee before the song was over, and that was the response. He didn’t know which was which.

People say, ‘Well, how do you know it works?’ When it works on you that’s great, but when it works on somebody else who doesn’t know the music that’s playing and has exactly the kind of reactions that are specified in the scripting, the way to explain that is somehow that music and words are affecting the listener. We believe that is certainly part of what we’ll call a quantum consciousness field experience.

So the effect happens on many levels, but, again, as a practical individual, I am less concerned about exactly how something may work, rather I’m interested in if it does work. If it works, that is the most important thing. Then we’ll fill in the theories afterwards.

I came up with a lot of theories in my graduate work and over the first 15 years of my career. Most of those still seem very appropriate but now we have the language of quantum physics to expand and to help clarify what I was talking about in terms of listening to get in the space between the notes. Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer are calling this getting in the gap, and quantum physicists are saying this is how we tune into the field of universal consciousness.

So, we’re all using the same concept, maybe slightly changing the words. But when you listen deeply; when you stop using music just as background and really focus on the spaces and listen interactively, where you give your total and conscious energy and attention to receive the intentionality and energetic orchestration that the composer and recording artist has put forth; that’s when you can really pick up on the healing powers to the max.

The audio of this portion of the interview is posted on SpiritLinksNewsletter.org http://www.spiritlinksnewsletter.org . Don’t miss Steven’s comments on the profound impact of James Brown on music, dance and culture, and the influence of the Beatles on our society and music.

Read “Reflections on James Brown, the Groove and the Zone” in the email newsletter archives (January 2007) on Steven Halpern’s InnerPeaceMusic.com http://www.innerpeacemusic.com .

Steven is updating his 1982 CD on assisting drivers in being more alert yet relaxed while driving. The new project, Mindful Driving ™ , currently in beta testing, “includes positive affirmations that are intended to create safer drivers, reduce road rage and make your overall driving experience safer and more enjoyable.” Contact info@innerpeacemusic.com for more information.

Whilst at school, Enya studied the piano and classical music. Three of her brothers and sisters, Máire Ní Bhraonáin (Mary Brennan), Ciarán Ó Braonáin (Kieran Brennan) and Pól Ó Braonáin (Paul Brennan) formed, together with their uncles Pádraig Ó Dugáin (Patrick Duggan) and Noel Ó Dugáin (Noel Duggan), a folk music group (at first with a certain American feel and then more purely Irish, though influenced by jazz and by others such as Pentangle). The group was named Clannad, a contraction of “the family from Gweedore” in Irish. In 1980, at the suggestion of their manager, Fachtna O’Kelly, Enya became a member of the group, participating in the recording of two of their albums, Crann Ull and Fuaim. Apart from providing vocals, she played the Wurlitzer electric piano and later the Prophet 5 synthesizer. She performed with Clannad on many occasions, until, in February 1982, on completing a European tour, she left the group, no one really knowing why. Perhaps she was fed up with being treated as just the little sister.

Since then she has lived in Artane, in the north of Dublin, sharing a house together with Nicky Ryan and Roma, his wife, who comes from Belfast. All had been involved with Clannad at some time. Nick Ryan had worked as a sound engineer with Planxty and later with Clannad, at the time the group was starting out. In 1980, their manager, Fachtna O’Kelly, took charge of the new group The Boomtown Rats, for which reason Nicky thenceforth took charge of their [Clannad's] work. In his house he installed a recording studio, Aigle. There he has recorded, for example, Christy Moore’s album Ordinary Man, which has three songs in which Enya takes part in the chorus.

It was also Fachtna O’Kelly who suggested to Enya after she left Clannad, that she devote herself to composing for films. And so, in 1984, she approached her first important task. Roma Ryan had sent a cassette of Enya to film producer David Puttnam, who already had to his credit such titles as Midnight Express, Chariots Of Fire and Los Gritos Del Silencio. Puttnam asked her to compose dreamy and romantic music with a sixties feel for the feature film The Frog Prince.

Having a studio at her disposal, Enya worked almost always at home with the Roland Juno 60 synthesizer or the Kurzweil sampler, and then added piano and voice. Nicky Ryan recorded everything and helped to put the compositions into their final form.

The next commission was for the BBC. It was to prepare music for an important television documentary series on the history of the Celtic civilisation throughout its 2700 years. The series was called The Celts. The composition took ten months work. The music was liked so much that the BBC decided to release a selection as an independent record, before the series was broadcast and entitled simply Enya, with barely a mention in the liner notes that it was a soundtrack. She played nearly all the instruments on the album, sometimes doubling up as many as eighty voices to create her characteristic sound, of dense textures, and ethereal voices, dreamlike and enchanting. It was to paint by means of synthesizers a modern sonic landscape that could evoke different atmospheres, from the mournful lament of ‘Deireadh An Tuath’ to the striking ‘Boadicea’, with its astounding dynamic of overdubbed voices. Nicky Ryan acted as producer and co-author of the arrangements and his wife Roma wrote nearly all the lyrics, for the most part nearly inaudible or impenetrable, giving an evanescent character to the music by being sung in Latin, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic.

Only on three of the pieces did other musicians take part, one on each. Patrick Halling, a classical violinist who frequently plays in recording sessions for rock artists (Jethro Tull and Steve Howe, for example), added delicate nuances to the final track. The great piper Liam Óg O’Floinn (or Liam O’Flynn, founder member of Planxty and regular collaborator of composer Shaun Davey) played the melody part of ‘The Sun In The Stream’. Lastly, the guitarist Arty McGlynn (ex-member of Van Morrison’s band and of Planxty and current member of Patrick Street) correspondingly completed with his elegant flourishes the only song whose lyric was comprehensible to us, being in English and sung clearly, ‘I Want Tomorrow’. It was, moreover, the song chosen as a single and video (curiously, in the video the guitar is not heard.)

This record subsequently climbed to number one in the Irish charts, which started the commercial rise of Enya. She collaborated with the singer Sinéad O’Connor reciting a short text on ‘Never Get Old’ from her album The Lion And The Cobra.

She signed with an important multinational (WEA), and had a resounding success with her second album Watermark, which has passed 10 million sales worldwide, and has gone platinum in 14 different countries, helped by the single ‘Orinoco Flow’, a No 1 hit in Britain. Then she repeated her world success with Shepherd Moons, which spent an amazing 199 weeks on the Billboard charts in the USA and has sold over 11 million copies.

A new version of the album Enya was released as The Celts and in 1995 with The Memory of Trees was yet another smash hit album. Enya has been nominated for four Grammy Awards and has won two, both for “Best New Age Album”, Shepherd Moons in 1992 and The Memory of Trees in 1997. Also in 1997 she released a compilation album titled Paint The Sky With Stars that contained a selection of the Enya better known themes and two new songs: ‘Paint The Sky With Stars’ and ‘Only If…’ That year itself came out A Box Of Dreams; a box set that contained a three CD collection and an illustrated booklet. The CDs were entitled Oceans, Clouds and Stars, and they cover the Enya career since her debut in 1987.

The artist spent the remainder of the decade contributing soundtrack material to various projects, before returning to the studio to record A Day Without Rain, her first new studio album in five years. Of this album she says, “The title refers to the mood on a particularly peaceful day on which there was no rain. We do get a lot of rain in Ireland in all seasons. We had a run of days where it had done nothing but rain. Then one day the sun came out. It was then that I wrote the title track, so what else could I call it?”.

The album shot up the US and several European charts almost a year after its release, thanks to the use of the track “Only Time” in news coverage of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

Her music has appeared in many more smash hit films, including “L.A. Story”, “Green Card”, “Toys”, the TomCruise/Nicole Kidman film “Far and Away” and Martin Scorcese’s “Age Of Innocence”. Enya’s new song ‘Only Time’ features in the film, “Sweet November”, starring Charlize Theron and Keanu Reeves. In 2001 she records 2 brand new songs for Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack, “Aniron (theme for Aragorn and Arwen)” and “May It Be”.

She has made appearances at benefits and has played for the Pope, the King of Sweden and the Queen of England, but these involved playbacks of her work while she played and possibly sang along, not a true live performance. “It’d be a really great thing to do,” Enya says of performing live. “We’ve first been talking about next year, trying to at least do a TV special performance, having the setting, say, in a cathedral or something and involve quite a few people – orchestrating the music, having choir. It’d be fantastic to try. You can’t emulate the same sound, but definitely the music can cross over to a rendering for a live performance. We’re both very confident about that.”

In 2002 Enya got a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination for “best original song” with “May It Be”. Wins a new Grammy Award for “Best New Age Album” with A Day without Rain. Wins three World Music Awards: “best-selling Female artist”, “best-selling New Age artist” and “best-selling Irish artist”, and wins the award for “best pop-rock single” with “Only Time” in the Echo Awards (Germany)…

Although fronted by Enya, the music released under her name is the result of collaboration between three people: Enya, who sings, writes and performs all the music, her producer, sound engineer and co-arranger Nicky Ryan and his wife, lyricist Roma Ryan. Enya has previously stated that without any one of them, “Enya” would not exist.

Enigma

After some solo projects, Cretu started to produce the first Enigma record “MCMXC a.D.” in 1990 using the nickname “Curly MC”. Until today, with seven albums out, “Seven Lives, Many Faces” being the latest one (released on September 19, 2008), 35 million CDs sold worldwide, 50 number one hits, 90 platinum discs, and songs appearing on more than 1,000 compilation albums.

With the 1990 hit “Sadeness Part I,” Enigma brought the new age fascination with Gregorian chants and old-world culture to the world and clubs; the resulting single was both unique and irresistible.

On his second album, 1993’s “Cross of Changes”, some of the old-world elements remained, but the new age angle came to the forefront in a set of slick, radio-friendly pop. The well-known “Return to Innocence” was born.

Enigma 3: “Le Roi Est Mort, Vive le Roi” followed in 1996 – a musical summary of the previous concepts.
The fourth Enigma record, “The Screen Behind the Mirror”, followed in early 2000, and in 2003 “Voyageur” came out. Three years later, “A Posteriori” (2006) was released. The result is an intergalactic sound trip through the universe and back, based on a more electronic/trance sound.

The harmonies in New Age music are generally modal, consonant, or include a drone bass. The melodies are often repetitive, to create a hypnotic feeling, and sometimes recordings of nature sounds are used as an introduction to a track or throughout the piece. Songs of up to 30 minutes’ duration are common.

New Age music includes both electronic forms, frequently relying on sustained pads or long sequencer-based runs, and acoustic forms, featuring instruments such as flutes, piano, acoustic guitar and a wide variety of non-western acoustic instruments. In many cases, high-quality digitally sampled instruments are used instead of natural acoustic instruments. Vocal arrangements were initially rare in New Age music but as it has evolved vocals have become more common, especially vocals featuring Sanskrit, Tibetan- or Native American-influenced chants, or lyrics based on  mythology  such as Celtic legends or the realm of Faerie.

Some New Age music artists openly embrace new age beliefs, while other artists and bands have specifically stated that they do not consider their own music to be New Age, even when their work has been labeled as such by record labels, music retailers, or radio broadcasters.