Man in the High Castle - what's on his Walkman

Brillant Question. There would be none because there would be no Jews or Blacks or Gays . Country May be saved but its uses in describing the horrors of class would be viewed as " Negative to the Reich" . We would be listening to infinte vartions of Wagner, Cheap and Sentimental kitsch and Marches. The only thing i can imagine reconstuited to fascism is mass produced Teen Pop.

So no Japanoise then?

Was there not a prominent jazz-listening underground throughout the Nazi era in Germany? One might imagine that kind of thing continuing. (NB my only knowledge of this is from once seeing the trailer for "Swing Kids") Skiffle as an underground resistance music anyone?

It should also be remembered that Nazi foreign policy plans did not include actually invading the Americas. The ideal outcome for them would have been a surrendered America keeping Nazi public works solvent with a steady stream of reparations. So it's quite likely that American pop forms would have developed, except more militant and nationalist.

Also by this point, with the initial revolutionary generation long since dead, the 1000-Year-Reich would probably have 'modernised' and be tacitly tolerating popular beat combos a la the awful state- sanctioned rockers towards the tail-end of the Soviet era.

The Jazz Spirit of the wiemar refused to die. Maybe smazidat could ruin this empire as well.

But are we talking about general Nazis Win second world scenarios, or the eponymous Man In The High Castle of the Phillip K Dick book. In that, the Germans have occupied the Eastern USA, the (relatively benign) Japanese have occupied the West Coast, and a neutral buffer state where TMITHC lives, writing alternate history books with the aid of the i-Ching.

I'd say culture in that part of the world would be exposed to cross currents of Japanese and Nazi influence. There would probably be a local Americana oriented musical culture, which would be fostered by the Japanese (they are shown in the book as being avid collectors of American artifacts). So, jazz, the blues, and country might well survice under Japanese patronage. However, given his love to the i- Ching, TMITHC might well ignore all that kind of stuff and go straight to pure forms of Japanese music.

In the book the Japanese collect only antiques, leading to a booming fake artifact manufacturing industry. Would there be vinyl plants pressing fake pre-war blues and jazz records?

Much of Japanoise came as a result of Psychedelic Sounds of our '60s & '70s, as well as Krautrock, etc. If they exist after Axis won then yes. If not then no. Who knows...

The Germans were innovators when it came to the art of recording and they've been good with advanced electronics, too. Combined with American know-how and desire for rebellion, we'd have much better computers and computer-music systems than today. Collaboration between computer users would also be easier, and though closely supervised by the Nazi overlords, people would find ways to subvert authority in entirely new and more efficient ways. Or so one would hope. Still, I imagine a world where anti-establishment music would be more universal and more important than ever, and hence blues, jazz, rock, country, hip-hop, etc. would be digitally created and exchanged at phenomenal rates,and people's lives would necessarily be tied into the Internet in every way possible, as long as any anti- government activity was beyond detection. Only "pop" music and radio would remain completely under the control of the authorities. Wait a minute--I'm very nearly describing America as it is today!

Overall Nazi relationship to technology and innovation ambiguous at best: totally chaotic "organisation" of Nazi society meant that projects existed on arbitrary whim of this or that senior Hitlerite, some more genned up than others: thus cranks and frauds often greeted with more excitement and open- handedness than actual on-the-money boffins. It's true that leaps in tape tech in Germany were helped out by Gestapo interest (also true that tape introduced to US via interest of Bing Crosby, who liked the idea of recording his evening radio show in the morning so he cd play golf all afternoon...)