I don't know how many of you GM's run campaigns with a lot of cultural background, but I made up this info on possible musical form on RIFTS earth on my way to the camera store this morning...
First off, Prosek, following in Nazi footsteps, is a hardcore Jazz fan (Hitler wasn't, but a lot of his advisors were) by this time "American Jazz" mostly resembles across between Swing-era "Cuttin'-a-rug" music and modern soft-core R&B singers like Mariah Carey. It is more dance- oriented than experimental (there are rumors that Lynn Minmei has sung in private receptions for major Coalition Officers (like the first scene in Schindler's List)) There's a lot of synthesizers. Check out the book Different Drummers for a fascinating history of music in the Nazi Era.
Now, Prosek has a problem. When his soldiers spend hours flying around the wastelands of America, they often will listen to the small, local pirate radio stations in the semi-feudal areas around the coalition which also sometimes broadcast blatantly anti-coalition statements because these stations play "un-official" music, which many of the flyboys like. (Hitler had the same problem, if radio doesn't exist in your RIFTS earth, ignore this detail). The solution lead to a new form of music that spread like wildfire in military bands that combined traditional Wagnerian/ Victory/US Marine Corps band brass music (The star-Spangled Banner, The Olympics theme, soaring wind instruments, very patriotic) with a low, heavy, marching beat industrial bass line in the back. Brutal and inspiring, no lyrics, feeds soldier's legendary metal addiction. At ceremonies, the music is played like a traditional military band, but instead of the conductor waving a baton, he sits with his back to the band playing a massive electronic organ that provides the beat and electronic effects.
There are two reactions against "established" music. One is called "Psyker" which is not popular enough for the Coalition to have noticed it yet. It is based on a beat with a hard down stroke and a weird "portal opening" upstroke. Crash!ThrummmmCrash!ThrummmmmCrashThrummmmm It is almost entirely electronic and totally manic, with tape loops bouncing across each other and rattling back and forth constantly. Many of the composers are psychic. The beat tends to speed up faster and faster, then totally stop. Samples are used liberally, and there's a lot of screaming, cartoony voices. Often the songs have complex mathematical structures, but to most people it sounds like complete adrenalin-rush chaos. In order to successfully dance to it without injuring yourself or being completely out of sync, you need either precognitive powers or acrobatics and a PP of at least 12. Scattered reports from psychiatric hospitals around the coalition say things like "the patient was discovered in his apartment, sitting in a chair listening to what was apparently a recording of previously-unstudied interdimensional phenomena" no-one outside the "scene" has figured out that this is actually supposed to be music. Sort of Skinny Puppy meets John Cage while spiralling toward an aircraft carrier on a kamikaze mission piloted by Sonic the Hedge Hog.
The second reaction, which goes entirely the opposite direction, technologically-speaking, has been officially banned by the Coalition, because of its association with a criminal life style and because possession is a great pretence for arresting malcontents when there's no other proof. It's called "Pirate Rock" or just "Pirate" and it has its roots in a revival of older musical forms. It's low tech, guttural-voiced, drunk off your ass, nihilistic blues/rock with a little folk thrown in and almost always includes passages of semi-hiphop mumbling, and sometimes manages to upshift into full-blown rage, though generally just expresses jaded bitterness. G.Love & Special Sauce, Pogues, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Tom Waits would be the distant ancestors. "Sit my friend and listen, and put your glasses down, sit my friends and listen to the voices of the drowned." -Pogues "Wreck of the Medusa"
Lord Splynncryth and most of the slimy Atlantean crew like (or pretend to like, so Splynncryth won't kill them) what is called Eklarr which is across between music and poetry reading to those of Splynncryth's race. It sounds like Darth Vader Breathing irregularly underwater, the songs go on for days at a time. Once in a while one hep Splugorth will say to his pal "Whoa, did you catch that (humming)'Glllgggggrrrrrrth-Raga-naeeth'-man, is this guy a genius or what?"
From out of Japan there has been an interesting new musical form combining traditional Japanes drumming (if you've ever seen it it's amazing, they go at these huge drums with fat wood drumsticks like they were fighting the Emperors eight legions) with orchestral instruments and elcetric guitars and bass with chanting singers over top of it. Multi-layered, mantra-like, intense, polyrhythmic and very heavy. A similar movement is in western Africa.
In South America, tribal folk music with a lot of reed instruments and stuff has been augmented by bizarre instruments brought in by lizard men and wood elves. This "Spirit Music" as it is called, can, if played properly, dispel evil spirits and undead (GM's discretion). Lush, haunting, and totally alien. Many mutant animals like this stuff.
Gargoyle music is much like European Medieval folk music, but the harmonic progressions are, to human ears, all wrong.
Three years ago, the NGR unearthed the "Tower Cache" containing an immense pre-RIFTS warehouse of music. Scholars, re-mastered whatever was salvageable (which was a hell of a lot) and now copies of these discs exist in the NGR military library system. They still aren't sure what to do with it all, (some elements of the government are, of course, suggesting major censorship operations) but enough tapes got out that there has been a renewed interest in a lot of older music, so that individuals and bands playing the kind of stuff we would recognize can still be found, although RIFTS-era musicians reinterpret the music in a totally different context, often using sound-collage and electronic techniques in bizarre places. Twisted Sister's "We're not Gonna Take It" and James Brown's "Sex Machine" have both inspired large followings of musicians who are all pretty much rehashing the old styles, but then, they're mostly new movements, one has to wait and see...
By Zachary Smith.