Question Tuesday – What IS Wizard Rock in 2013?

When wizard rock started way, way back in the day (100 years ago, it seems that way) it was 2 brothers playing in their backyard, who quickly started dragging their guitars and keyboard to other backyards and basements. When some other bands joined in, they usually grabbed their acoustic guitar and set up in a bookstore or library to sing their songs about Harry, Ron, Hermione, and all their friends (and enemies too).

Then, somewhere along the line, wrock became polished. I don’t mean that in a bad way, it’s just that singing your songs on an acoustic guitar started to take second place to music that had more of a layered sound and recorded in some semblance of a studio instead of your living room. GarageBand loops became very familiar as music began to sound more “pro”. Wrock fans got a different experience hearing this music instead of what they were used to hearing at a library show featuring tired but happy touring performers who all shared one guitar.

Wizard rock’s boundaries expanded as more bands began releasing music – nearly every style was present, from rock to punk to folk to celtic to orchestral to metal to rap to you-name-it. And that was a good thing. A VERY good thing, because it exposed listeners to new styles they may not have gravitated towards if the lyrics weren’t about the Potter Universe.

Shows began becoming huge. Instead of singing to 10 kids sitting on the floor, it was hundreds (if not thousands, in a few instances) of fans staring up at the performers on a stage, hearing their music blasting out of huge soundsystems. Shortly after that, Team Starkid took the world by storm with their elaborate musicals, introducing a new generation of Potter fans to wizard rock.

Or did they?

What this long winded and drawn out (but relevant) introduction leads to is actually a simple question:

What IS wizard rock in 2013?

You may have noticed that recently we’ve featured songs and performances by musicians that wouldn’t traditionally be called wizard rock. We’ve shared songs by individuals that happened to write a song about something Harry Potter related, we’ve posted videos from geek rock bands that wrote a song that they tagged as wizard rock, and we featured a lengthy review about a fantastic wizard rap mixtape released by some musicians that really don’t identify themselves as wizard rockers because they do so much more with their work. One of our very first posts after the ‘pedia reboot featured someone asking what it meant to call themselves a “wizard rocker”.

So we want to know – what does “wizard rock” mean to you in 2013? Can it be just a few songs released by someone who writes about many other nerdy topics? Would you happily buy and play just those songs, or more of their work? Is wizard rock something that needs to be performed on a stage with lighting and a soundsystem, or is it at it’s heart something that can be shared with a handful of other people in your friend’s living room?

Let us know your thoughts below! We’re all very curious to hear what fans and performers think as we continue to feature various bands and news/releases here at the Wizrocklopedia.

9 responses to “Question Tuesday – What IS Wizard Rock in 2013?”

  1. Scych Avatar

    I like the way this question is written. 😀 Wizard rock is a subset of geek rock, because Harry Potter is one of the new pillars of nerdery, just like Lord of the Rings, World of Warcraft or Dungeons and Dragons. One thing I’ve noticed poking around Tumblr, is that a lot of Leaky Con fanatics are also Dr. Who and Star Trek fans. So you might argue that a true more “pure” Wizard rock band is one that just does Harry Potter material. But are you closer to your fans if you ALSO do Star Trek and Dr. Who related music? Most people are not JUST into Harry Potter. So you likely relate to your fans more if you can also geek out with them over who is their favorite Dr. or favorite star ship Captain. A group that devotes its resources to wizard rock songs not knowing it’s even a category, speaks to the heart of really enjoying witches, trolls and spells “oh my.” To me, that’s true wizard wrock. Finally, many bands may dabble in existing HP books and call it wrock, but what do you call a group that can and WILL expand on the stories, creating new adventures? Essentially taking HP fanfic and putting it to music. Let’s say Hermione meets and fights her doppelganger. What would you call that?

  2. WrockSnob Avatar

    To me, there is an important distinction between “wizard rock” and a “wizard rocker”. Harry and the Potters are wizard rockers who perform wizard rock. Alex Carpenter is an ex-wizard rocker who sometimes performs wizard rock. Team Starkid and Hank Green are not wizard rockers, but they do write wizard rock.

    To me, wizard rock is any song that is about Harry Potter – so, stuff from the fandom, stuff by people like Steve Goodie and Adam Warrock, even those two songs from the Goblet of Fire soundtrack – that’s all wizard rock. But Adam Warrock is not a wizard rocker, because he is not part of this fandom. He might have respect for the fandom or be willing to collab, but this is not his fandom first and foremost.

    As for what wizard rock is at this time it’s… well, it’s changing. *Evolving*, one could say, if that word is still allowable on this site (wrock history in-joke!). On the one hand, it really looks like the genre is dying – new releases are drying up, no one’s even talked about there being an awards thing in at least a couple years because, well, why bother, the readership of sites like the ‘pedia and my own have dwindled, and less and less people have been able to tour.

    On the other hand, there were still tons of people wrocking out at LeakyCon, and the DeGeorge Brothers say that they’ve been seeing a whole new generation of fans – if you were ten when the last book came out, you’re now SIXTEEN, which kind of boggles the mind. To the people that do continue to play, there still seems to be an audience, at least enough to support the occasional tour, if not multiple people touring full-time at once.

    And while releases have dried up, we have seen an increase in wizard rock from non-wrockers. The frankly surprising success of Lil Iffy proves that there is still an audience, and untapped audiences, out there for songs about Harry Potter.

    So, all being said and done, to be honest, wizard rock is probably better off than I would have guessed it would be, SIX YEARS after DH. I think the more important question is – What is the Wizard Rock FANDOM in 2013? Because that is a much more splintered and tricky question, and we’ll probably have to wait and see how it all turns out.

  3. Scych Avatar

    Well, given that Leaky Con 2014 is already being envisioned, I see Wizard wrock and Geek rock only growing as a viable new music genre. The fact that Warner Brothers studios did a joint venture with Leaky Con, suggests that there is money to be made. Geek conventions are popping up all over the place, so the market sector is getting bigger and bigger. Where I’m from, we have nine annual Geek conventions. Orlando is also a hot bed for Geek rock and has been for a long time. That’s where Nerdapalooza is held and it’s just another gathering for merchants, actors, musicians and fans as well as corporate sponsors. So if you think like a business, which every band is, you’ve got a global market that’s on fire, corporate partners and few barriers to publication. The only thing that stands in the way of success is the lack of will, tenacity and vision of each band. The only reason new publications are drying up is that the bands didn’t consist of REAL artists. If music has chosen YOU, the compositions never stop. So you’re going to see more people like me who just dump material. That’s all I do is generate material, there is no quitting. If a wizard rock band quits, it was just a fad for them. My ultimate goal is composing for movies, trailers and games as well as playing conventions. And I’ve got a couple tricks up my sleeve that I haven’t pulled yet. 😀

  4. Amy Snow Avatar

    I think the “Wizard” part of Wizard Rock now encompasses anyone who shares the ethos of the Harry Potter community. It means writing songs about things that are relevant to the people who have the wizard soul. Some people call it ‘Nerdfighter’ some people call it ‘geek.’ It doesn’t really matter what the name is, it’s a spirit and community, I think.

  5. Sam Harris Avatar
    Sam Harris

    I would have to agree with Snobby when it comes to the definition of wizard rock and wizard rockers, though I might consider Hank Green a wizard rocker, but only because of his close connection with wizard rockers, and if he were this involved with wizard rock four or five years ago, I think he would have released more wizard rock and done more collabs with other wrockers.

    Now onto the question of where wizard rock is now:
    I heard my first wizard rock song in July 2007, a couple weeks before DH was released, but I didn’t become a part of the community until later that year, when I bought my first few albums and started really loving it.
    Six years later, I have to be honest and say that the amount of time I spend listening to wizard rock and going to shows has waned (though that’s mostly because there is less new music out there, and a small fraction of the concerts, even in New York City).
    I know there are people, many people, out there who I can connect with about this genre of music, and there are still places on the internet that I can go to have real conversations about wizard rock, but I don’t really see new people getting involved. Yes, the Potters have seen a new generation of wizard rock fans, but those are never going to be the people who will start a band or see lesser-know wizard rockers perform.
    They will enjoy the music when they hear it, and hell, they might even buy some albums.
    But there is a sizable pool of wizard rock fans who have been around for a while, who are passionate and loving, and that is the pool that we will continue to draw upon for conversations like this, but that pool is not getting any bigger.

    Maybe I’m a bit pessimistic, and I would be more than happy to be wrong. We’ll see what happens in the next few years.

  6. Clare Avatar

    I feel like “wizard rocker” should be a label that someone chooses for themselves so in that way, to be a wizard rocker you’d have to be aware of wizard rock and the community.

  7. Russ Avatar

    I wanted to pose this question to everyone because my own views on the topic have changed over the years, and I was curious if anyone else’s had as well.

    For the longest time, to me, wizard rock was something that could be performed anytime, anywhere. It was meant to be a communal experience, and if you couldn’t pull it off in someone’s living room, it wasn’t wrock. Because of that, I never considered StarKid to be wizard rock – just a show that parodied/satirized Harry Potter.

    BUT… my way of thinking changed. I had posted about it on Tumblr a while back, and wanted to see if anyone else’s experiences mirrored mine, in that I’ve expanded my views on wizard rock. Times change and things adapt, and I think wrock has too. I think we should celebrate *anyone* who loves the Potterverse enough to make some music about it. It doesn’t have to be DIY, it doesn’t have to fit a wide range of criteria – if it’s music with lyrics about Harry Potter, then gosh darn it, that’s good enough for me.

  8. VoldeMargo Avatar
    VoldeMargo

    I’d like to disagree with the statement that there’s little to no new wrock music showing up. I see a new wrock song by a new person popping up in the tumblr tags at least every week, and know of established wrockers working on new albums right now. I think the perception of there being little new content in wizard rock is actually connected very closely to the rise of general geeky music fusing with the wrock scene. People don’t go through the old channels anymore. They don’t find wrockers on myspace, decide on a Harry-potterish name for their band and start posting audio demos; they hear a youtuber whose music encompasses numerous geeky things (say, Alex Carpenter), and then post a wrock song under their own name on Youtube.
    In conclusion, I’d agree that wrock ‘bands’ may be making less music, but that there is still plenty of wrock appearing in a slightly different form.

  9. Hawthorn and Holly Avatar

    Wizard Rock IS constantly evolving and it is all of these things everyone about is saying. We’re a wizard rock band, but we have songs in other “geek rock” genres, there is nothing wrong with that! As an artist, and I’m sure the others feel the same, when something moves me to write, it can’t be denied. I think wizard rock is whatever we want it to be, with the heart and the values that we all fell in love with from the Harry Potter series. I love the DIY of house parties, and the big shows equally, and it is our plan to play as long as we all can keep the feeling of the music alive. I plan on releasing a Hunger Games album as a side project for District 13 Cowboys and am working on a full length Hawthorn & Holly album for next year. Harry Potter will always inspire us to write music, but there’s nothing wrong with wanting to branch out. Love you guys and am glad the pedia is going strong!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *