Peck Rock

Peck Rock(alt. 'Billyrock', often just called 'Pecko') is a musical genre founded in the 970s in Bailymena, Skodia, by halfling immigrants from the Hydra River Highlands. It draws its influences from hop-rock, jazz, and traditional Riverlands musical styles. Typically, it features short, fast-paced songs with minimal instrumentation, edgy vocal styles, and clever --oftentimes highly political-- lyrics. It has crossed borders and cultures with its DIY ethic and strong spirit of camaraderie, and is performed in a variety of styles worldwide.

Origins

In the 950s, halfling immigrants from the Riverlands came to Bailymena following promises of a better life in the Holy Cathrican Empire. Having left a rural existence in a country lacking any modern industry, many of these were unprepared for such an industrialized centre. Though not the poorest folk of their home nation (those who were couldn't afford the passage to Skodia), most of these were too destitute to afford anything beyond the cost of passage. And so, they settled in their port of arrival, married, had families⁽¹⁾.

Around the same time, advances in etheradio brought hop-rock to the Isle of Skodia in a big way. In contrast to the Jazz music popular at the time, hop-rock was usually performed by smaller bands in more intimate venues, concerning topics with broad, but generally harmless and innocently-intended appeal.

By 970, generation of Skodian halflings had grown up watching their parents endure second-class treatment in pursuit of Imperial promises which had never materialized, and often endured second-class treatment despite being Cathrican citizens themselves. The music they made combined the improvisational expertise of jazz with the intimate nature of hop-rock. It used exciting, stripped down, sped-up instrumentation and passionate lyrics written by a generation of angry warrior-poets with a bone to pick to get its message across.

972-978 were banner years in the Bailymena music scene. A thriving pub circuit established a network of venues in need of entertainment, which local musicians exploited to its fullest potential. The enterprising, do-it-yourself spirit which had built the network of venues sold self-produced etherecords at those very venues.⁽²⁾ In time, those records found their way onto etheradio, and in exactly the same way as hop-rock came to Skodia, peck rock went to the Empire.

Etymology

In the 8th and 9th centuries IR, "peck" was a pejorative term for someone of diminutive stature such as a gnome or a halfling, and a reference to a now-outmoded unit of measure for flour. (A peck was equal to two Imperial Galleons). Over time, the name has become associated with the short length of the songs on offer, and individuals wear it as a badge of honour.

Diversification

Everything influences everything it comes into contact with, in this, Pecko was no different. Its message of camaraderie and self-reliance found root in the unionist and civil rights groups of the day, and the music spread with the movement. Wherever it found an audience, that audience changed it; styles emerged, then rivalries between those styles emerged⁽³⁾. Some of the major forms of peck rock are:

FIRST WAVE

The sound that started it all. Stripped down, angry music played passionately by people who can't really get past three chords and the truth, but that's all they need. Music trying to save the world or preaching about a world that should be, as the composers see it.

NEW STYLE

'New style' was originally synonymous with peck rock; many disliked the troublesome origins of the name (see 'Etymology') and strove to move past them. These acts broadened their musical palate and expertise, incorporated more danceable rhythms, slowed the frenetic energy just a degree. New Style acts began to embrace avant-garde fashion as art, and brought elements of peck rock into less dangerous styles of music. By the mid-980s, it became a catch-all term for pecko-influenced anything.

BARDCORE

Sooner or later, every musical form recieves its attention from the Colleges. Touted as a return to form by those who thought the New Style had drifted from its original intent, Bardcore peck is fast, aggressive, and politically aware. It displays the expertise brought to the genre by the New Style but adheres more closely to the 'do more with less' ethic that originally drove the movement; raw, unbridled emotion is favoured over anything catchy or clever, although these elements are far from absent from the form. Masters of the form are capable of using it for great violence.

POP-PECK

Where many of peck rock's forms eschew the transient nature of popularity in favour of making meaning, one doesn't necessarily preclude the other. To this end, many peck-influenced acts embrace what's popular to blatantly sell their music as product. With the revival of the form in the 990s, Molly Rocket brought Pecko to living room scryglasses across the Empire with her song, "Let's GO!"; since, the song has been used to market everything from sporting events to vacations, and is considered a popular classic. This isn't to say that there's not meaningful content in pop-peck, far from it. It's just pecko brought to its most-accessible form, where (some say) it barely resembles its original form at all, though it still depends upon a three-chord structure.

OTHER STYLES

Minor sub-genres of varying sizes can be found within the Peck Rock form, such as Skoil, Ho! and Stonegater, but these are typically regional. I'll expound on them as need arises. :)

Footnotes

1. This was nowhere near as gentle a process as it reads. The impoverished halfling immigrants often crowded into subdivided homes that were intended for single families, taking advantage of their diminutive size to live in tiny, cramped spaces. Cellars, attics and shantytowns in alleys became home. The absence of adequate sewage and running water in such locations made cleanliness next to impossible, which caused diseases of all kinds to flourish, which in turn caused Riverlands immigrants to face hostility from other groups within Bailymena who saw them as unsanitary, accused them of spreading diseases and associated them with vermin.
   To make matters worse, between the mass immigration and the legendary fecundity of halflings, within a generation the halfling population of Bailymena was equal to that of the entire Riverlands. This didn't help the comparison at all.
2. Quite a few of these venues had previously been bootlegger's cellars, shuttered BUSTER stations, and empty houses before the halflings moved in.
3. Bardcore doesn't see pop-peck as part of the same genre, Skoil mixes Akkodian styles with Skodian Jazz... the list goes on.

'Dropkick Smurfy' is a peckrock act with unionist leanings known for their highly political lyrics and strong support of the working class.

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by Mad Atom Studios via Midjourney AI

'Daisy and the Gobshites' are a pop-peck ensemble from Bailymena famous for their fast-paced music and sunny lyrics.