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The Girl, The Myth, The Fanfiction

It's Real For Us- Lauren Fairweather

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Performing Potter: Wizard Rock Before A Very Potter Musical made its YouTube debut, there were other songs about Harry Potter. Wrock, shorthand for Wizard Rock, can be traced back to 2000 when a band, Switchblade Kittens, released “Ode to Harry '' about the titular character of the series (Zumbrun and Geis). Music inspired by media fandoms, however, is much older, tracing from a practice called “filk,” a typo of “folk” that occurred at one Star Trek convention that stuck. “Filking is a practice adopted by media fandom from earlier science fiction fandoms,” explains Anne Collins Smith, a collector of early recordings of “filk” music (2009). While Switchblade Kittens may have released the first filk song about Harry Potter, the trend is not new. After the release of “Ode to Harry,” Switchblade Kittens released a full album, taking on the persona of “The Weird Sisters,” a band in Harry Potter. Shortly after, Harry and the Potters formed in 2002. Harry and the Potters, according to the band, started as a joke. Joe and Paul DeGeorge, brothers from Massachusetts, came up with the premise that the two of them would play Harry Potter in different years. “Paul would play Harry Potter in his seventh year who uses a Time Turner... to form a band with his fourth-year self, Joe,” (Hayashi, 62).

Harry and the Potters paved the way for many other Harry Potter inspired bands such as The Draco Malfoys, The Whomping Willows, The Remus Lupins, and The Parselmouths in the early 2000s. Excluding Alex Carpenter, the artist behind The Remus Lupins, these bands were non-commercial, playing at libraries and small venues. “Wizard rock is best contextualized as an offshoot of the straight edge punk scene,” explains Aya Hayashi “[Harry and the Potters] attributed the straight edge ethical practices of avoiding drugs, alcohol, and explicit sexual references to their identification with a fictional character,” (Hayashi, 63-65). The new groups followed a similar pattern to Harry and the Potters. Carpenter, however, marketed himself with a level of “indie commercialism” that was new to the community. This “laid the groundwork for the first major growth of the wizard rock scene,” (Hayashi, 63-70).

A key development in the Wrock scene was the formation of the Harry Potter Alliance. Founded by the Degeorges of Harry and the Potters and Andrew Slack, the Harry Potter Alliance sought to address social justice issues that were key themes in the Harry Potter series. The first Wrock fundraising event raised money for Amnesty International and, by the end of 2006, the Harry Potter Alliance was a certified non-profit (Hayashi, 71).

The Harry Potter Alliance, in collaboration with Wrock bands, pursued multiple different causes including “humanitarian and literacy campaigns” (Hayashi, 75). Wrock bands also embedded political messages into many of their songs. “We started working together in 2005 to use these stories as a framework for introducing people to social justice work: to create a real-world Dumbledore’s Army,“ explained Paul DeGeorge in a Rolling Stones interview (2018). Songs like "Cornelius Fudge is an Ass” by Harry and the Potters highlighted the hypocrisy of the Bush administration (Morales).

After the second part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released in 2011, a “lull” period began in the Wrock scene (Hayashi, 101). Some bands released their last albums or singles saying goodbye to the community and to the ongoing series, as did Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls with “End of an Era,” while other bands continued to play sporadically.

Hayashi writes about the possibility of a “second wave” of Wrock emerging in her dissertation on the topic. This prediction seems reasonable, with new bands forming and old bands coming out of retirement. Harry Potter is making a resurgence through new additions to the canon such as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movies. A key reason for this comeback comes from the 2016 election. Songs like “Cornelius Fudge is an Ass,” that hadn’t been played in concert since the Bush administration, came out of “retirement” and new political songs were released (Morales). Tonks and the Aurors released a full-length album in 2018, HuffleRIOT, that highlights the importance of activism. Songs like “Harry Potter’s Alive,” “Aurors Fight,” and “Yes All Witches,” serve as rallying cries for fans, while songs like “Death Eater Masks” paint a picture of Trump supporters as Death Eaters, singing, “I don’t know what’s worse, red hats or death eater masks.”

Harry and the Potters also released their new album in 2019. The album “chronicles the events of the 7th and final Harry Potter book where J.K. Rowling’s teen wizard and his friends are on the run from a xenophobic, authoritarian regime and must work diligently to take down a dark wizard who capitalizes on fear and emboldens supremacist wizards” (Harry and the Potters). The music is deeply emblematic of our political moment, featuring songs such as “On the Importance of Media Literacy Under Authoritarian Rule” or “The Trace,” which critiques the U.S. surveillance state and who it disproportionately affects.

The future of Wrock seems to be tied to our future. Whether the upcoming election affects Wrock’s resurgence is still to be seen, but for the moment, it’s making a comeback that’s, as Paul DeGeorge describes, “a little less goofy and a lot more ‘it’s time to fight,’” (Morales).
The interventions of Wrock are particularly interesting in today’s context as fans have become frustrated by J.K. Rowling. In response to various tweets J.K. Rowling has made over the years that suggest her lack of support for her transgender fans, Tonks and the Aurors wrote the song “Wizard Punks”

Tonks and the Aurors frontman, Steph Anderson, used performance as an outlet to critique J.K. Rowling and remind the fan community that their values do not have to align with those of the original author of Harry Potter. While fan theatrical productions like Potter Puppet Pals and A Very Potter Musical used their platform in a similar way to slash fanfiction, offering up interpretations not expanded upon in the texts. Wrock, as a genre, acknowledges the world outside of the canon text, commenting on social issues, politics, and even the role of the author in relation to the canon text. From the beginning, Wrock stands apart from other fan works because of its refusal of escapism. Though many wrock bands take on the point of view of a single character (i.e. Tonks and the Aurors, Draco and the Malfoys, The Remus Lupins, etc), there’s a self-awareness to the performances that go beyond those of A Very Potter Musical.

Instead of what A Very Potter Musical does, which is bring our world to Harry Potter. Wrock brings Harry Potter to our world. Musicians consciously make references to our current historical moment while taking on the persona of fictional characters. In a series like Harry Potter, which is all about standing up to fascism, discrimination, and injustice, making those connections visible helps fans understand their own power to change the world. Audience members sing along to the show and interact with the band members, asserting, as Lauren Fairweather, a wrock artist, sings in her song “It’s Real for Us,” “We can do magic... if we stand together.”