Striving for Irrelevance - The New Age Grammy Awards Blow It, AGAIN!
This past Friday, the Recording Academy announced the nominees for the 2026 Grammy Awards. While all the major press was examining the big category entries and pop stars who made it or didn’t, I was more interested in some of the categories lower on the card, mainly The Best New Age, Ambient and Chant Album. That’s one category even though it should be three.
These are the nominees:
1. Kuruvinda by Kirsten Agresta-Copely
2. According To the Moon by Cheryl B. Engelhardt, GEM, Dallas String Quartet
3. Into The Forest by Jahnavi Harrison
4. Nomadica by Carla Patullo Featuring the Scorchio Quartet & Tonality
5. The Colors in My Mind by Chris Redding
Have you ever heard of any of them? I suspect the answer might be no.
I decided to sit a little bit before writing about this year’s slate of nominees in the New Age category because my first reaction was: “pathetic.” Why? Well first you have to keep in mind that my opinion is colored by programming Echoes, where I think we’re playing the best of this kind of music, although, for various reasons we don’t play all of the best. But looking at this slate of nominees, I thought, we didn’t play a single one of these recordings.
In previous years, I can say we didn’t play that year’s nominees because they sucked. But this year, I can’t really say that these were bad recordings. And for most, I can’t state that they are inappropriate for the category. In fact a couple of them are cliches of the genre. They are just not, as is often the case here, consequential.
Jahnavi Harrison’s Into the Forest is the “chant” representative this year, although these chants sound more like Sade’s smooth R&B decked-out with tablas, chimes and twinkling synths. Harrison is a classical violinist who has studied Indian music and has locked herself into the British Kirtan and spiritual communities. Her voice has Sade’s languid soulfulness and I did find myself kind of entranced by her middle-of-the-road mysticism.
Cheryl B Engelhardt also has chants, sort of. They sound vaguely Native American ascending to rapture. But it’s all oohhs and aahhs and far from the glossolalia ecstasy of Lisa Gerrard, Miriam Stockley or Azam Ali. It’s also a step down from albums like Kevin Keller’s Arcadia, which was submitted for this list. There are some inventive arrangements like “Dawn Light,” with sweeping strings, and “Crescent Cradle” enters a meditative space with Tibetan singing bowls and eerie, ghostly synths. According to the Moon is not an unqualified album, it’s just not what you’d submit as the cream of the crop.
Chris Redding is a name I did not expect to see this year. You might recall the uproar over his album, Visions of Sound, which was nominated last year. There was controversy over its submission since it was a pure R&B/Hip-Hop album. It ultimately was removed on a technicality, but it should never have been there in the first place. I can’t quite say the same for Redding’s submission this year, The Colors in My Mind. This is contemplative R&B, with lo-fi percussion, backing choruses, and Redding’s soulful vocals which recall the mellow side of Bobby McFerrin. He actually lifts McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy” on his “All Around the World,” singing “Here’s a little song I wrote, Let’s explore it note for note.” He goes from there into his own story over a Caribbean beat of hand percussion and voices of children commenting playfully on his lyrics. Redding often gets vaguely psychedelic, reminding me of P.M. Dawn. This album is a quantum leap over Visions of Sound. Some R&B/hip-hop label should sign him. But he should not be signed into the New Age category, despite the spiritualism of his lyrics.
Like Redding, Carla Patulo’s latest Grammy nomination is much more appropriate than her 2023 Grammy-winning entry, So She Howls. That was a neo-classical work that sounded like a film score, but certainly not New Age. You can’t say the same for this year’s submission, Nomadica. It’s an ambitious work that aspires to sweeping emotional depth, something of a lament for Patullo’s late mother. There are spare lyrics, sung by the vocal ensemble, Tonality, but they are washed away by the mellifluous melodies, and the strings of the Scorchio Quartet and Lorenza Ponce. But this is more of a classical choral work than a new age album, even if it is resolutely, sometimes suffocatingly, somber.
Finally there is Kuruvinda by Kirsten Agresta-Copely. She was nominated in 2023 for her album, Aquamarine. She expands on that solo harp theme here adding a bit of very subtle electronics and the cello of Dave Eggar on two tracks. To say that Agresta-Copely’s compositions are slight, would be giving too much gravitas to slight. It’s a classic cliché new age album, meant to sit quietly in the background. Even in the background, it is tediously dull.
Grammy voters keep going to albums and musicians who aren’t definitive, who aren’t pushing the envelope, and who seem to have no presence in the admittedly, increasing small world of New Age etc. music. And how Chris Redding gets in here again is beyond me. None of the artists here are lighting up Spotify or radio airplay charts. Of Chris Redding’s 12 tracks from The Colors in My Mind, only three register at all on Spotify, and those don’t even hit 5000 plays. Who the fuck is voting for him? Or for any of these albums?
You might notice there are no Ambient albums nominated for Best New Age, Ambient and Chant album. This is not necessarily a voting problem, but a membership issue. There weren’t that many ambient submissions and I suspect most ambient artists just don’t bother with the Grammys. However, releases by Steve Roach (Reverent Sky), Brian Eno (Lateral) and David Helpling and Eric “the” Taylor (The Precious Dark) were submitted and were all more worthy of nomination
In the end, like voters for Curtis Sliwa in the New York City mayoral race, Grammy voters seem to be striving for irrelevance in their selections.
THE END
Haha