Dark Earth Music and Culture Notes (Under Construction)
Moosic
Musically, general tastes are different. Jazz has never fully emerged into the level of international popularity it enjoyed in @. Rock and roll and blues music hasn't emerged in the same way and remains a niche genre, albeit sizeable, in certain portions of the United States of America. This does mean no skiffle, no Beatles or any other of the British invasion bands.
British musical tastes are somewhat akin to the 1920s-1940s with the influence of swing melding together with a more noticeable English tradition.
Big bands/swing music and popular music predominate in North America, with classical music having a higher public profile all over the world; orchestras (as well as ballets, choirs and the like) are a major tool of projecting soft cultural power through visits amongst the superpowers.
There are some very different musical traditions that have emerged, with the influence of Asian, African and Byzantine music but a few that are felt. There are strong traditions of folk music among various nationalities and diasporas.
USA
In the United States, ragtime and Tin Pan Alley pop combined with a certain degree of white washed second hand jazz into big band music in the 1930s and 40s. There is swing, but it doesn’t quite swing as wildly. There are some influences from various forms of American folk that emerged independently in the 1930s as well as country and polka. The blues remain a primarily Black form of music mainly centred on the South, with jazz being its major Northern offshoot. Rock and roll had a brief life from the 1930s through to the mid 1950s before petering out; some vestigial influences can be found in other musical genres, but in the main, it fizzled; it’s variants, such as surf music, doo wop and rhythm and blues are unheard of.
There is a fair bit of influence from South/Latin American and West Indian genres, such as calypso, bossa nova, samba, Andean music and tango, have some degree of popularity, as well as several original sources: American Indian music, dwarven brass bands and choirs, electronic classical and Martian. The latter has some elements of strange 1980s ‘New Age’ music with hurdy gurdy elements; it has a certain degree of popularity as it is outside of any copyright restrictions. Mambo or other @ Cuban variants (rhumba, cha cha cha) do not exist. Foreign language novelties such as Sukiyaki and Edith Piaf aren’t quite so novel.
The main musical form favoured by the younger audience is pop, which is comparatively anodyne compared to @ 1969/70. Pat Boone, Bobby Darin, Paul Anka, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Skeeter Davis, Ricky Nelson and similar artists have been in the charts.
Britain
No skiffle, no trad jazz, no beat music and no rock make for a very different 1960s sound. The predominant pop genre is a slightly more English dance band music with elements of folk, swing, show tunes and general pop. Some songs from @ would make it through, such as Petula Clark’s Downtown, Unchained Melody, Born Free and You’ll Never Walk Alone. I can see Cliff Richard still getting a bit of fame due to his combination of youthful looks and singing, but in more of a pop sense than rock. There is a strong folk element similar in some ways to Steeleye Span from @ as well as the influence of bardic music and elven elements; the latter is similar to Clannad in some ways.
In general British dance band music is rather less “swing-y” and incorporates hooks/elements from older classical music and marches. Compare In the Mood to We’ll Meet Again.
Notably, British male singers tend to adopt a distinctly British accent as compared to the more American ones used in @.
Kulturny
‘National Styles’
Britain does have a mixture of Victorian and Edwardian steampunk. This is increasingly set up as almost a deliberate cultural choice of identity against American modernity, at least on behalf of some. It reflects Britain's attempt to carve out its own niche in the Cold War.
The United States is a mixture of Dieselpunk and Atompunk. As the most advanced, richest and most powerful nation on Earth, this influence bleeds off into a lot of other cultures and societies. There is still an element of the rejection of Old World styles in favour of the new.
France could currently be described as 'Belle-Epoque/Fin de siecle'-punk, even though some aspects of that seem like a contradiction in terms. Having been extremely badly damaged by WW2 and the subsequent bloody stalemate and strategic retreat in Indochina, culture, fashion and popular culture trends include a fair bit of wistful evocation of past days of gloire.
The rest of Europe is different yet again, with the impact of the Second World War having been even more damaging than in the case of France. It follows a path somewhere between the American model and that of Britain, putting it in the region of Decopunk.
Back in the USSR, there is an increasing emphasis on Socialist Realism, modernism and futurism, with lashings of Soviet Atompunk/Raygun Gothic and the personality cult of Stalin. There is a great deal made of technology and setting aside the hackneyed vestiges of the past, but this is a surface covering over a deeply traditional Russian core. A riddle inside an enigma.
Imperial China has an interesting cultural mix of traditional styles and fashions with assertive modernity and Chinese nationalism. There could be some parallels drawn with early 20th century Imperial Japan, prior to the 1930s.
Japan is rapidly rebuilding from the war and booming economically, so there is a certain amount of modernism and futurism at play, but there has been a growing cultural movement that hearkens back to both traditional Japan and the Meiji period. Nostalgia for the samurai period will lead to some rather amusing combinations, along with the competing cultural influences of America and Britain.
- The ongoing impact of large scale universal National Service in Britain and the Dominions and conscription in the United States is heavily felt in youth culture. There has not been the emergence of a specific teenage subculture and the general youthful sense of rebellion that was already starting to poke its head in the 1950s in @ is significantly more constrained. Many of familiar artists have had very different lives. The late 50s and 60s satire and comedy boom that gave this world the Frost Report, Tom Lehrer and Monty Python (to name but a few) does not occur in anywhere approaching the same way.
- General law and order is on a par with comparatively more sedate pre-WW2 conditions. It is also influenced by the higher role of established religion in Britain and Europe. Prison conditions are very hard, virtually on Victorian levels. Gangsterism and organized crime is subject to a quite efficient backlash by policing services aided by both technology and magic.
Public order offences are dealt with somewhat severely and disapprovingly; some aspects are similar to modern Singapore, albeit in a vastly different context. Private detectives and private policing agencies such as Pinkertons play a significant role and there is a notable mercenary subculture revolving around ongoing colonial conflicts in Africa and Asia.
This has a flow on link to television and cinema, where crime as a theme is explored differently. Without Prohibition, the Mafia has not emerged to the same position in the USA, having been strangled at home by Mussolini. Crime is examined in a less-gritty manner and is viewed in a very black and white manner.
- Fashion in Britain does depend on social status, with the aristocracy tending towards early Victorian styles; businessmen and the middle classes tending towards a more sober Edwardian style; wizards, sorcerers, alchemists, academicians and priests preferring elaborate robes and vestments; working classes tending towards solid Victorian/pre WW2 style; adventurers, swashbucklers and the like adopt a style more akin to that of the Renaissance and Restoration; members of the nonhuman races either adopt styles appropriate to their social standing or wear more traditional racial costume. Eccentrics tend to dress in whatever bizarre form they envisage.
Across the Atlantic, American fashion is rather more modern and daring, but would still appear to be along the lines of the 1930s to an external observer, albeit more colourful and brighter. Outfits and clothing are cut more lavishly as a general rule. Hats are still worn nearly universally by men.
In Europe, the postwar tendency has been for sober conservatism in fashion, but there are some divergences beginning to occur in France and Scandinavia; the former incorporates some very distinct Belle Epoque elements.
In the Far East, fashions differ based on the nation. Imperial China places greater emphasis on traditional costumes and uniforms than Imperial Japan and the latter has an increasing distinction between Western style clothes for work and Japanese clothes at home and for leisure.
Overall, there are a lot more uniforms around the world - not just from the military, but for various companies, corporations and societies. University students in Europe often wear what would seem to us to be rather strange and retro livery (similar to @ in some cases) whereas in the United States, they tend towards slightly more rebellious outfits. Some even wear denim jeans, but risk great sanctions for doing so at more conservative establishments.
- Official drug prohibition is focused primarily on the scourge of opium and opiates, with cocaine and various amphetamines such as benzedrine occupying the niche they did in the late Victorian era, albeit frowned upon socially and increasingly subject to legal sanction in many cases. LSD is publicly unknown but is the subject of (ultimately unsuccessful) military research in the United States. Marijuana is a very niche drug and looked upon very darkly; without a Beat Generation, it has not really entered popular culture to any great degree.
- The private possession of weapons is on Victorian levels in Britain, with it being not uncommon for a gentleman to be armed in some circumstances
- Dueling is illegal in many countries and generally frowned upon, but there are circumstances and environments where it occurs.
- The BBC was the sole television service provider in Britain up until very recently and operates on quite Reithian lines and observes certain levels of censorship of government secrets and military operations under powers that have not been revoked since 1945.
- Britain has a Ministry of Information, like many other countries. Public propaganda (certainly not called such, given the negative associations raised by the Nazi experience) does have an ongoing niche.
- The Rastafarian movement met a rather quiet end before it really took off due to a combination of being regarded as sedition by secular authorities and heresy by the Church.
- The office of the Witchfinder General is nothing on the level of the Spanish Inquisition, but no one expects it. It is responsible for hunting down witches and eliminating the use of illegal magics such as necromancy and demonology. Witchcraft and necromancy are the only capital crimes punishable by burning at the stake.
- Cinema and newsreels remains extremely popular. Hollywood and American cinema do not have the same grasp on global popular culture, with significant competition from the British and French film industries, with the British film industry being the beneficiary of advantageous local content regulations. US cinema still dominates, given its sheer size, but Many European actors and directors do not end up in Hollywood. French, Italian, Swedish, German and Japanese cinema are experiencing golden ages that mirror their economic recovery. They have a somewhat higher profile than in @.
- Peace movements and anti-nuclear groups such as CND are comparatively sidelined and viewed dubiously, with heavy infiltration by security services and restrictions on press reports of their activities. They still exist, but number in the hundreds rather than the thousands; the earlier British development of the hydrogen bomb occurred in the heated atmosphere of the Korean War when public opposition ran up against a number of constraints. The perception that the peace movement is run by Reds isn't necessarily a true one, but it has stopped them making great inroads in Britain, Canada and the United States.
- Anarchism is still regarded as a major international terrorist threat as it was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, along with several good old fashioned Red Scares
- Books, plays, radio programs, television and films are subject to certain degrees of censorship in line with a more Victorian public morality. The notion of the permissive society has not raised its head due in part to the ongoing series of wars in the 1950s.
- Oral contraceptives have not been developed, and such development is heavily frowned upon by a number of churches.
- The Scouts have a larger and more expanded role, with stronger military overtones. Almost two thirds of British boys and girls aged 6 to 18 are members.
- Domestic servants are still not hugely uncommon in Britain and America. There has been an impact from new mechanical inventions, but many middle class households will still often employ a cook/cleaner/general housemaid at the minimum.
- Surrealism and cubism do not attract as much public attention, though Dali and Picasso both draw the attention of the Spanish Inquisition. The position of Satre in France is endangered by his leftist leanings under a strongly anti-communist monarch and government.
- Architecture will not tend towards universal modernism and brutalism, with Le Corbusier being of limited influence even on the Continent. Edwardian Baroque and Victorian styles predominate in Britain, with heavy influence from Gothic Revival and a rather ornate rendering of Art Deco. In the United States, Art Deco and Modernism are the predominant design philosophies, with Stalinist and Social Realist architecture their counterparts in the Soviet Union. In Europe, there are be discernable differences between French, German, Italian, Austro-Hungarian (incorporating Hungarian art nouveau) and Spanish architecture, with all tending towards a combination of modernism and art deco. Scandinavia has a mix of National Romanticism and Nordic Classicism.
Sportz
- In soccer, Brazil is a favourite for the 1970 World Cup, followed by Germany, England, Italy and Austria-Hungary.
- The Dutch have a strong 1970s side onward from there and Argentina have some good players coming through.
- South Africa is not facing any bans or boycotts. They thus add an interesting dimension to Test Cricket in the 1970s, but it isn’t clear how they’d go in other sports.
- In cricket, the West Indies have an even larger talent pool to call upon, Australia have many good players and England have a decent side. The biggest known quantity for me though is India. The combined sides of India and Pakistan from @ present an interesting different factor in a lot of respects - fitting Imran Khan and Kapil Dev into the same side, for example.
- I can’t see World Series Cricket emerging, so the development of the whole tone of the game as well as ODIs will be different…
- Aussie Rules is different, but there doesn’t seem to be an Australian audience for DE.
- Olympic hosts are turning very different: Buenos Aires in 1968, Constantinople in 1972 and NYC in 1976.
- In the USA, basketball is yet to really make the jump to the mainstream. Baseball remains the premier game and hasn’t yet lost its “innocence” through scandal.
- Sunday sports are still contentious and not the accepted norm, with blue laws playing a role in the USA.
- In Britain, soccer matches are still not scheduled on Sundays and cricket matches have a rest day.
- Golf still has an elitist reputation in the USA
Fuud
Food and cuisine has developed differently, with millions of European and American servicemen and women having bought home exotic tastes from extensive deployments in the 1940s and 1950s, as well as the earlier impact of colonial empires.
In the United States, regional cuisines are still highly distinct, but an overarching national style of American food that has developed over 100 years of the melting-pot experience. It is seasonal, regional and traditional. Frozen food and chain restaurants are yet to make significant inroads, with the latter being more likely to increase its market share over the 1960s. Supermarkets and huge groceries are less common than more local stores. Fast food exists, in the form of hamburger, fried chicken, sandwich and hot dog franchises, but the majority of American popular restaurants are classic diners. I'm torn as to whether or not there are any drivers for a much smaller scale development of fast food. The prevailing style is 'home cooking'.
With the absence of Prohibition, more robust domestic beer and wine production has accompanied the development of Continental-style restaurants. Meals and home cooking reflect a more family based society, with only 162 divorces/1000 people (as compared to 264 in 1940 and 385 in 1950). Beef and pork consumption are high at 96lb and 72lb per capita respectively, followed by chicken, fish, turkey and lamb/mutton (29lb, 24lb, 20lb and 18lb). Pizza is yet to make the jump out of the large cities into popular culture. There hasn't been a change of meat classification categories that happened in @ in 1950, which combined Prime and Choice into a new Prime category, known to some as 'prime crime'. This is combined with larger sized animal breeds to yield larger and better quality cuts of meat. Dry aging and grass feeding predominate.
In Britain, food and drink standards haven't undergone the same degree of decline due to the World Wars and rationing as in @ and the culinary situation and tastes are quite Edwardian, with some differences. One is the preference for English rather than French names and labelling that grew out of traditional rivalries. The general diet of the working classes has greatly improved and there is increasing diversity of food stuffs from around the Empire and world.
- Fast food has spread across America since WW2 on account of the motor car. This has emphasised the continued rise of portable foodstuffs, such as hamburgers and fried chicken, and the franchises that specialise in them.
- There has also been accompanying hot dog and sandwich specialist restaurants for the fast food market.
- However, in general, fast foods are yet to fully penetrate and take over the ‘zeitgeist’ and there is still quite the role for regional specialities, cuisines and diners. One of the factors contributing to that is Ray Kroc not being able to buy out the McDonald brothers in 1961; we’ll see some more development of that in 1969.
- The prewar situation is introduced in this book:
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104659750 and as a general rule, that paradigm has yet to be fully extinguished by fast food and is still present.
- General American abundance can be found in the portion sizes and array of dishes offered in restaurants and diners.
- The overall feel is an amalgam of the older prewar situation with the advance of technology, without the drop in quality.
- There has not been the @ 1965 drop in marbling standards by the USDA for beef, which when combined with similar changes in 1975 lead to so-called “prime crime”, or the lowering of the standards of the highest category.
- Factory farming has not boomed as in @, nor has there been the same shift to corn-fed beef cattle.
- On corn, there won’t be the same shift to use of high fructose corn syrup, with the accompanying impact on obesity and health. There is some interesting discussion here:
www.scientificamerican.com/article/time ... hink-corn/ . On Dark Earth, there won’t be the same use for ethanol or HFCS, so where does it go? A mixture of animal feed for poultry and pigs, greater domestic consumption and big exports of food, both as aid and commercially.
- It is still common for city/suburb dwellers, where practicable, to have a garden and fruit trees, as a hangover from the wartime experience of emphasising home production.
- There will not be a shift of the 1950s/60s food pyramid/recommendations to the 1970s one, which contributed towards obesity increases. Sugar consumption, whilst higher in the US than the rest of the world, is still under @ levels.
- If you were to walk down the aisles of a DE US supermarket, you’d see less heavily processed foodstuffs.
- Californian regional cuisine is a bit developmentally different, without the same direct border with Mexico.
- Mexican food and Tex-Mex food hasn’t really made the jump from Texas and the South West to the rest of the United States.
- Nachos haven’t been invented yet.
- Across the Atlantic, in Britain, we see a tad more change from 1968 in @. The combination of Imperial/Commonwealth food politics and domestic agricultural policy means there is quite a lot of produce available at steady prices.
- The lack of the impact of postwar austerity and rationing has meant there wasn’t the same drop off in relative quality and standards of cuisine.
- In general, there is more and better fruits and vegetables available; and more meat is consumed on a per capital basis.
- Milk and dairy consumption is quite high.
- Changes in migration patterns have meant that Indian and Chinese restaurants are still confined to the largest cities, rather than starting to spread out. The historical British culinary interest in curry has just started to really take off at this point, but here is somewhat muted and comes in the form of more Anglo-Indian adaptions: rather than a butter chicken and rice, one would find a beef curry with vegetables, onions and curry powder served with mashed potatoes.
- When Indian restaurants start to spread, they will have a much more esteemed position/cultural cachet, as well as serving some of the more elaborate dishes.
- Persian restaurants have started to spread around the great international cities in a much heavier way and more distinctly.
- Likewise, a somewhat different style of West Indian/Caribbean cooking is diffusing internationally, combining the Caribbean elements of @ with the different Anglo-Cuban evolution of that cuisine.
- Some wartime nastiness with Italy did cause some damage to the number of Italian restaurants, cafes, ice cream sellers and so forth that began to increase from the 1950s in @. Pasta is largely unknown, saved for tinned spaghetti and macaroni, and pizza is an alien foreign delicacy.
- Fewer Berni Inns as of 1968 (as compared to 1970), but other steakhouses, chophouses and carveries are a bit more common, with higher standard fare and larger portions. Their identity and style is deliberately very stereotypically British (read John Bull and The Roast Beef of Olde England) as a result of cultural differentiation and subtle government encouragement.
- Continued Ministry of Food run British Restaurants provide set menus cheaply, both as an aid to public nutrition and as a skeleton/cadre structure for expansion into wartime/crisis public feeding.
- Beyond some limited London restaurants and some places near larger US bases, the hamburger is yet to take off. There was no Wimpy’s franchise opening by Lyons in 1954.
- The major British ‘fast food’ is fish and chips, followed by meat pies and various types of roast/corned meat sandwiches.
- Pub opening and closing times were regulated to a slightly reduced degree during each world war and quickly reverted to the pre 1915 norm in 1919 and 1946 respectively, which allowed for opening between 0900 and midnight, with many city pubs and those near large factories/shipyards/armaments works having licences to open beyond and outside the norm.
- Off licences by and large don’t exist in the same broad fashion.
- No pubs are permitted to open on Sundays.
- Fish consumption is high, driven by supply and MoF encouragement, which in turn is motivated by the multiple uses/strategic value of the fishing fleet. Fish on Friday is a widely followed tradition on cultural grounds.
- There is no dearth of flavour, as some commentators have pejoratively ascribed to British food of the 1960s in @, which comes from the base quality and natural tastes of the foodstuffs, use of quite a lot of traditional herbs, no decline in the medieval/early modern English popularity of garlic and some rather special new inventions.
- These are a combination of @ spices, flavoured salts, MSG and equivalents and a bit of a fantastical Willy Wonka approach; think what Heston Blumenthal and his ilk could accomplish with real culinary magic.
- The other major food related areas where magic has played a role are storage/preservation (a subsection of which is military rations) and cooking devices. There are ovens that can roast a 25lb turkey to perfection in half an hour, cook 12 dishes differently and simultaneously and other such ‘marvels’. Frozen meals can be heated quickly with a fair bit better quality.
- More venison is generally available and mutton and veal retain their respective niches.
- Chip pans have been replaced by safer household deep fryers.
- Beer is served at 36 degrees Fahrenheit which, due to some magically assisted developments over the centuries, results in no loss of flavour profile, which is a bit richer, due to continued use of gruyt herbs as well as hops.
- Dwarven ale is stronger (16-25%), richer in taste and through some secret process, contains a fair whack of the necessary calories, vitamins and minerals needed for nominal survival, although not the lot.
- The halflings population is quite ‘food centric’ and provides many of the great cooks of England, as well as instructors at military culinary schools.
- French cuisine has less of a cachet/hold over the popular imagination as the epitome of food excellence. One of the unfortunate byproducts, from an external universe perspectives, of greater prosperity has been the lack of a breakthrough for Mediterranean cuisine as achieved by Elizabeth David in @
- School dinners/lunches are still provided in the majority of institutions, along with free orange juice and milk.
- More wine is made in southern England and Lyonesse, but perhaps half of it is grape wine and the rest is various forms of fruit wine.
- Abroad, there have also been changes. Due to the lack of an equivalent to the Gastarbeiter programme in Germany, doner kebabs have not begun to become popular.
- A more cohesive Austrian-Hungarian fusion cuisine has begun to develop over the 20th century with advances in transport and storage technology. Various forms of schnitzel are very popular and are starting to break out internationally.
- Given the lack of the same Greek-Turkish population exchanges of the 1920s in @, gyros/yiros haven’t made the jump, either to Greece or the Greek diaspora.
- French cooking hasn’t seen the emergence of nouvelle cuisine to supplant cuisine classique.
- Television chefs have made earlier inroads, with Julia Child, Graham Kerr, Fanny Craddock, Delia Smith (five years before @) and James Beard all making inroads. Keith Floyd will be joining their ranks sooner as one of my rare personal taste inserts, as I enjoy him a great deal.
- Martian and Venusian dishes are really out of this world.
- As a general rule, whether in the USA, Britain, Europe or the wider world, that golden moment of regional cuisines/styles combined with modern tech and capacity has extended a little longer.