Flipping through my copy of GURPS Cthulhupunkk I noticed something that has been bugging me for a while about shadowrun. There are no new musical styles. Cthulupunk outlines one new genre, Spooky, which fits with the Cthulhu parts of the game, but the point remains. It's been sixty years since the present day and the only thing they really managed to do was add Troll to Thrash Metal. The equivalent would be the same musical styles between the nineteen forties and today. Considering the massive social trauma of Goblinization, the Awakening, the Great Ghost Dance, etc.. You would think something new would come up. Anybody have any ideas?

With the current trend toward everything new being a subset of something established, no there will be no significant new music styles. That does not mean there will not be an abundance of angst rock, angst metal, angst country, and angst neo-post-classical music in response to goblinization, just that it will all be named and categorized before the public hears it.

[edit] I forgot angst neo-tribal rock [/edit]

Well, there's Neo-Celtic revival, for all the daisy-eaters (and other wusses out there). I think the increased globalism of the 6th world would prove a boon for the "world music" genre in all of its awfulness ("Just released--hits of the African Ghoul Tribes on their native instuments," "Snowdonian Folk Music to Add Ambience to Any Apartment," etc.)

On a more serious note, there is awakened music, with some bands/clubs catering to magical clientelle. Such music is as different from modern beats as doo-wap is from hip-hop.

I think the big lesson from the FASA days is that rock is here to stay. Whether it's Concrete Dreams or the latest Elvis trid-lookalike, rock music speaks to the trials and tribulations of the 2060s just as much as it did to the authors of the earliest SR modules in the 80s.

For a look at what SR rock'n'roll can be, check out Wild Zero

Well, I was going to cite Chromatic Rock, but then something occured to me.

1900 -> 1960
Ragtime -> Blues -> Jazz -> Bebop
-> Country -> Rockabilly -> Rock
|---------------------> Folk

2000 -> 2060
Heavy Metal -> Chromatic Metal
|---> Trog Thrash


You're entirely right. That's weird.

Aha! A subject on which I am knowledgeable for once! (<-professional musician - brownie points if you can guess what type by the end of the post)

As music becomes increasingly available to a broader spectrum of people, developments in musical style peak. Compare the changes between the Renaissance and the Baroque periods - it took centuries for a major shift to occur. But in the 20th century, we've run through a dozen or more styles - because everyone has bounced off of everyone else, melding and creating styles.

But the stylistic evolution has started to stall. The last really original musical style to evolve was the "house" supra-genre (with its subgenres of garage, drum and bass, acid, etc) back in the late 80's (MARRS' Pump Up the Volume was the real break for that genre). Since then there have been subgenre swings (Seattle garage rock, for example) but no major new paradigms. Mass communication hyper-accelerated musical evolution; but now we've heard almost everything out there, and it's had its effect on our music. Look at Paul Simon, exploring African and South American culture for his albums. Now our chart music sounds much the same as it did ten, fifteen years ago.

Some musical styles, however, have made it clear that they are here to stay. Folk music? Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span have been around for thirty-odd years - and incidentally are the precursors of the Celtic Rock movement so beloved of Shadowrun; you want Celtic Rock, go see Fairport do Matty Groves live. Heavy Metal? Ditto Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne. Rock and roll? Status Quo and the Rollng Stones just don't stop. Hell, The Who just released a new album.

Shadowrun's prevalent musical styles are essentially variations upon existing themes because they are proven long-runners. House music is almost nonexistent outside of clubs (and boy racers' cars) these days, but middle-of-the-road-pop (blech) still continues to sell. From the 90's onwards, we've seen that the phenomenon of the "boy band" (or girl band) is surviving, although individual acts don't, so it's fair to extrapolate "instant hits" that flare and die. And always there is good old rock music, like a backbeat to the music industry itself.

Oh yeah - I'm a folk musician who trained as a classical flautist. Gotcha!

The SR future transcends genres. At a SOTA63 song-o-mat you can get any a song whislted up just for you by the computers in any genre/style/instrument type you like.

The future is iTunes hell.

One of the popular bands in my SR game is The Assless Chaps, a retro new-wave British boyband.

i tend to make up my own styles. one of my chars is an advocate of indie music, listening to groups that experiment with things like Awakened click-bugs (the ones that whack their abdomens against the ground in order to make huge leaps).

Spookymonster came up with some cool ideas in this thread: 2063 Billboard Top 100... what are your characters listening to?

There have been mentions of some new genres; Troll Trash being the most recognized or mentioned, and the one from Tir.

Lol... I was going to post a link to that thread as well, but Kanada beat me to it. I'm flattered that it made such a memorable impression on you, K. I never did finish flushing that idea out... oh, well... maybe someday....

I think that they're forever stuck playing 80s heavy metal.

Well music goes along with the prevail attitudes in society (of course). In the 2050s (2nd Ed.) people were still adjusting to certain aspects of the 6th world and their place in it. Also the main focus seemed to be trying to be a raw need to feel something real and strong and a jaded worldview. This would have lead to what I imagine to be a kind of 'neo-grunge' type of musical movement.

In the 2060s people born after Goblinization are reaching their 20s and they feel at home in the strange world they find themselves in. This combined with the 3rd Ed focus on having the most technology possible might lead to a kind of return to electronicly produced music and 'cleaner' sounding rock music.

This kind of parallels real life musical movements, but that is cause all cyberpunk (all sci-fi for that matter) really mirrors the time it was written and SR is no exception, so why shouldn't the music?

I'd have to agree that while the music scenes of Shadowrun should be complex and diverse, it does seem to have somewhat (IMHO) locked in a combination of 1st Edition '80s metal with spooky/occult overtones (i.e. Blue Oyster Cult) to the 2nd Edition early '90s Seattle grunge thing. I always interpreted Concrete Dream, Dark Angel and the like to have been some sort of grungy angst rock. Of course, what music you use should be a product of atmosphere. My game world is extremely unstable and questionable, so I figured the average joe is gonna want something along the lines of angst rock, filtered by their cultural background. But if the PCs were to go somewhere like Dante's Inferno or maybe Club Penumbra (my game is set in 2054) they'll hear some sort of clubby electronica, poppy rather than deep. I usually just use music however I feel like as a means to atmosphere.

There wasn't a mention somewhere that a style of music popular in Shadowrun is music created from randomly selected sounds, generated on the spot?

sorta. in SOTA:63, i believe, it talks about the popularity of kiosks at which you can input choices to generate customized music for yourself.

Check SotA: 2064 for a brand new style. <shameless plug>

I think I made mention of a style of music called "Wreckno" in one of my games, a sortof discordant techno played at loud volume, inducing headaches and acts of violence.

-Joe

rap spinoffs such as "straight out of redmond" would infact have a different meaning nowadays