Pacifica Radio’s Music from the Hearts of Space and the Ambient Sound of California’s New Age VICTOR SZABO Introduction “You have been listening to Music from the Hearts of Space, presented every week by Timotheo and Annamystyq. Comes to you on Pacifica Radio, broad- casting on KPFA in Berkeley, 94.1 FM, KPFB in Berkeley at 89.3 FM, and Fresno, KFCF 88.1.” 1 Timotheo, speaking coolly atop the diaphanous steel- bowed guitar drones and plangent Dorian melody of Manuel Göttsching’s “Quasarsphere,” goes on to remind listeners that the community station’s KPFA transmitter operates with the power of 59,000 watts, enough to provide coverage to nearly the entirety of Northern California. His 3 a.m. sign-off on December 10, 1976, wraps up a three-hour program featuring, in part, prog odysseys by Mike Oldfield and Klaus Schulze; synth smearings from Wendy Carlos, Vangelis, and Geoffrey Chandler; picturesque ballads by folk singer- songwriters Judy Mayhan, Bruce Cockburn, and Buffy Sainte-Marie; Steve Douglas’s free saxophone and flute improvisations in the King’s Chamber of the Pyramid of Cheops; singing bowls and tinkling chimes from Henry Wolff and Nancy Hennings’s Tibetan Bells album; silky vocal harmonies by Berkeley-based ex-hippie group the Sufi Choir; Bay Area minimalist Jordan De La Sierra’s just-tuned electric piano improvisation Song of the Rose; the I am deeply grateful to Stephen and Layla Rael Hill for their hospitality, time, and generosity over the course of my research for this article. Thanks to Amy Coddington, Craig Comen, and Stephanie Gunst for their insights on earlier drafts, and to the Journal’s anonymous reviewers for their feedback. Portions of the article were presented at the annual conference of the Society for American Music, Montreal, 2017, the annual conference for the International Association for the Study of Popular Music—US Chapter, Nashville, 2017, the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, Rochester, 2017, and the Ambient@40 conference at the Uni- versity of Huddersfield, 2018. 1. Music from the Hearts of Space, aired December 10, 1976, on KPFA Berkeley, KPFB Berkeley, and KFCF Fresno. Transcribed by the author from a cassette archived in Stephen Hill’s private collection. Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 74, Number 1, pp. 43–90 ISSN 0003-0139, electronic ISSN 1547-3848. © 2021 by the American Musicological Society. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2021.74.1.43. Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/jams/article-pdf/74/1/43/465093/jams_74_1_43.pdf by American Musicological Society Membership Access, Victor Szabo on 03 June 2021