{
  "slug": "minimalism",
  "name": "Minimalism",
  "aliases": [
    "minimal music",
    "systems music",
    "process music",
    "phase music"
  ],
  "description": "American composers from the mid-sixties who replaced development with repetition and let a simple process run until it produced something nobody wrote. The idea underneath every loop-based record this site publishes.",
  "origin": {
    "place": "New York and San Francisco",
    "year": 1964
  },
  "lineage": [
    {
      "genre": "musique-concrete",
      "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/musique-concrete/",
      "inherited": "The tape machine as a compositional instrument. Reich's phase pieces are literally two tape loops drifting apart — a Paris technique applied to an American obsession with process."
    },
    {
      "genre": "modernism",
      "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/modernism/",
      "inherited": "The thing being rejected. Riley, Reich and Glass were trained in serialism and walked away from it — minimalism is a reaction against Darmstadt that could only have been made by people who had been through Darmstadt."
    },
    {
      "genre": "impressionism",
      "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/impressionism/",
      "inherited": "The precedent nobody claimed. Satie wrote a page and asked for it 840 times in 1893, which is the whole method sixty years early, and Cage spent a career pointing this out to anyone who would listen."
    }
  ],
  "bpm": null,
  "updated": "2026-08-29",
  "url": "https://waxonia.com/genre/minimalism/",
  "trackCount": 9,
  "curatedBy": [],
  "playlists": {},
  "tracks": [
    {
      "rank": 1,
      "trackKey": "terry-riley--in-c",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/terry-riley--in-c/",
      "title": "In C",
      "artist": "Terry Riley",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/terry-riley/",
      "year": 1968,
      "label": "Columbia Masterworks",
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Fifty-three fragments, any number of players, each moving on when they feel like it. Riley wrote a set of instructions rather than a piece, and produced the founding document of the whole method.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Terry%20Riley%20In%20C",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=yNi0bukYRnA",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 2,
      "trackKey": "steve-reich--music-for-18-musicians",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/steve-reich--music-for-18-musicians/",
      "title": "Music for 18 Musicians",
      "artist": "Steve Reich",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/steve-reich/",
      "year": 1978,
      "label": "ECM",
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "An hour of pulsing marimbas and breath-length harmonic cycles. The most seductive thing minimalism produced, and the record that made the argument to people with no patience for the argument.",
      "alsoOn": [
        {
          "kind": "curator",
          "slug": "the-desk-the-hundred",
          "name": "The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred",
          "url": "https://waxonia.com/selection/the-desk-the-hundred/"
        }
      ],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Steve%20Reich%20Music%20for%2018%20Musicians",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=1oOmUi4HGt0",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 3,
      "trackKey": "steve-reich--come-out",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/steve-reich--come-out/",
      "title": "Come Out",
      "artist": "Steve Reich",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/steve-reich/",
      "year": 1966,
      "label": "Odyssey",
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "One phrase from a Harlem riot testimony, looped on two tapes drifting out of sync until the words dissolve into rhythm. Devastating, and the origin of phasing as a compositional device.",
      "alsoOn": [
        {
          "kind": "curator",
          "slug": "the-desk-the-hundred",
          "name": "The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred",
          "url": "https://waxonia.com/selection/the-desk-the-hundred/"
        }
      ],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Steve%20Reich%20Come%20Out",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni-LmThfV6c",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 4,
      "trackKey": "alvin-lucier--i-am-sitting-in-a-room",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/alvin-lucier--i-am-sitting-in-a-room/",
      "title": "I Am Sitting in a Room",
      "artist": "Alvin Lucier",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/alvin-lucier/",
      "year": 1969,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "A man records himself describing what he is about to do, then re-records the recording forty times until the room's resonance eats the speech. The purest process piece ever made.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Alvin%20Lucier%20I%20Am%20Sitting%20in%20a%20Room",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=fAxHlLK3Oyk",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 5,
      "trackKey": "tony-conrad-with-faust--from-the-side-of-man-and-womankind",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/tony-conrad-with-faust--from-the-side-of-man-and-womankind/",
      "title": "From the Side of Man and Womankind",
      "artist": "Tony Conrad with Faust",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/tony-conrad-with-faust/",
      "year": 1973,
      "label": "Caroline",
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "New York drone meets a German rock band and neither blinks. The single clearest piece of evidence that minimalism and krautrock were two halves of the same argument about repetition.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Tony%20Conrad%20with%20Faust%20From%20the%20Side%20of%20Man%20and%20Womankind",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=gma2MJBCXZ4",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 6,
      "trackKey": "pauline-oliveros--bye-bye-butterfly",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/pauline-oliveros--bye-bye-butterfly/",
      "title": "Bye Bye Butterfly",
      "artist": "Pauline Oliveros",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/pauline-oliveros/",
      "year": 1965,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Two oscillators, tape delay and a Puccini record, assembled live in one pass. Oliveros was building the vocabulary of electronic music while being left out of most accounts of who built it.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Pauline%20Oliveros%20Bye%20Bye%20Butterfly",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=vepXC2RUW10",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 7,
      "trackKey": "julius-eastman--stay-on-it",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/julius-eastman--stay-on-it/",
      "title": "Stay On It",
      "artist": "Julius Eastman",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/julius-eastman/",
      "year": 1973,
      "label": null,
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "A minimalism with groove, gospel and a nervous breakdown in it. Eastman wrote the piece the school needed and was written out of it for decades; the score survived on a single tape.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Julius%20Eastman%20Stay%20On%20It",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=n6Aw9TJ5HQ8",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 8,
      "trackKey": "gavin-bryars--the-sinking-of-the-titanic",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/gavin-bryars--the-sinking-of-the-titanic/",
      "title": "The Sinking of the Titanic",
      "artist": "Gavin Bryars",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/gavin-bryars/",
      "year": 1975,
      "label": "Obscure",
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "A hymn the band supposedly kept playing as the ship went down, looped and slowly drowned in reverb. Released on Eno's own label, three years before he named ambient music.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Gavin%20Bryars%20The%20Sinking%20of%20the%20Titanic",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=2oVMRADOq5s",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "rank": 9,
      "trackKey": "philip-glass--opening",
      "trackUrl": "https://waxonia.com/track/philip-glass--opening/",
      "title": "Opening",
      "artist": "Philip Glass",
      "artistUrl": "https://waxonia.com/artist/philip-glass/",
      "year": 1982,
      "label": "CBS",
      "isrc": null,
      "whyItMatters": "Glass at his most approachable: a single arpeggiated figure with the accents moved just enough to keep the ear off balance. Six minutes that have been imitated for forty years.",
      "alsoOn": [],
      "links": {
        "spotify": {
          "url": "https://open.spotify.com/search/Philip%20Glass%20Opening",
          "exact": false
        },
        "youtubeMusic": {
          "url": "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=-nBE9U7q1Uc",
          "exact": true
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}