During the early days of the first science fiction conventions, fans would gather in hotel rooms and sing songs together. Soon creative musicians began writing original tunes specifically for the sci-fi genre, some of which were serious, others spoofs. By the 1950s, these performances had become a tradition at cons and garnered the attention of journalist Lee Jacobs, who wrote an essay entitled, “The Influence of Science Fiction on Modern American Folk Music.” The article was never published but an editor from the Amateur Press Society found it amusing that Jacobs had misspelled “folk” as “filk.”
The editor repeated the humorous anecdote many times, and “filk” soon became the official name for music composed and performed by science fiction aficionados. Fifty years later, another fandom-based genre of music debuted, and just as a typo in an unpublished article led to the birth of filk, an impromptu performance in the backyard of a home in Massachusetts swept across the country and around the world, giving rise to “wizard rock” as a result.
While filk music was inspired by science fiction, wizard rock evolved from the Harry Potter series of novels by J.K. Rowling. In his 2018 book I Wanna Wrock! The World of Harry Potter-Inspired ‘Wizard Rock’ and Its Fandom, Paul Thomas – himself a wizard rock performer – traces the history of this newer musical genre as well as the fandom that evolved from it.
“Wizard rock emerged during a very specific historical and technological context,” Thomas writes. “In 2002, Pottermania was part of the zeitgeist, with the books having ensnared an entire generation of children, as well as countless teenagers and adults. At the same time, technological breakthroughs had decreased the price of recording equipment, and more and more people were connecting online thanks to newfound high-speed Internet access. To (ab)use an idiom, wizard rock simply started in the right place at the right time.”
That place was Norwood, Massachusetts, not far from Boston. Two brothers – Paul and Joe DeGeorge, born in 1979 and 1987 respectively – were interested in science, mathematics, and more significantly, music. Paul was a member of a local synth-pop band called The Secrets, for instance, while Joe performed with Ed in the Refridgerators.
Paul DeGeorge was also a fan of the DIY-ethos of punk, as well as “oddball” bands like The Zambonis, which exclusively performed songs about hockey, and BlöödHag, a death metal band from Seattle that relied on science fiction for their repertoire. Having read all of the Harry Potter books published through 2001, Paul seized upon the idea for a band that sang songs from the perspective of characters in Harry Potter. He was so inspired that he even came up with what he considered the perfect name for such a band – Harry and the Potters.
Nothing came of the idea until June 22, 2002, when the two brothers organized a backyard concert featuring The Secrets and Ed in the Refridgerators. Unfortunately many of their fellow musicians failed to arrive on time, and even though attendance itself was sparse, Paul and Joe wanted to perform nonetheless. Paul resurrected his Harry and the Potters idea and pitched it to Joe, who liked it. The two brothers quickly wrote five short songs and performed them that evening, introducing themselves individually as Harry Potter, each from different years at Hogwarts.
Wizard rock might have died that night if it wasn’t for the publication of the fifth book in the Harry Potter series, The Order of the Phoenix, in June 2003. The hype leading to its release inspired the DeGeorge brothers to revisit their one-off performance as Harry and the Potters. A demo tape of the songs they had previously written was recorded and dropped off at Boston-area Borders bookshops with a note asking if they could perform in the store on the day of the book release.
To their surprise, Paul and Joe DeGeorge were not only invited to perform at one but five different Borders in the Greater Boston area. Realizing that the number of stores coincided with the number of songs they had, the two brothers quickly composed an entire album’s worth of Harry and the Potters material and released it two months before The Order of the Phoenix was published.
“When Order of the Phoenix came out, we played two gigs on June 20th and three gigs on June 21st – all at Borders bookstores,” Paul DeGeorge explains in I Wanna Wrock! “After those went over well, we booked a handful of gigs later in the summer mostly at branches of the Boston Public Library. Those library gigs did seem to generate a bit of buzz and by the end of summer, we had a pack of ten-year-olds singing along to the songs.”
While that “buzz” may have been limited to the Boston area at the outset, the abundance of Harry Potter fansites on the Internet soon took notice and expanded the reach of Harry and the Potters. A second album was recorded in 2004 with a summer tour following shortly thereafter that not only included performances in bookstores and libraries but other more intimate locales as well – including a house party in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, organized by Matt Maggiacomo.
The performance in Rhode Island was so well received by those in attendance – which included another set of brothers, Brian Ross and Bradley Mehlenbacher – that Harry and the Potters were invited back for another house party in April 2005. While Paul and Joe DeGeorge waited to take the stage, Ross and Mehlenbacher picked up their own musical instruments and introduced themselves as Draco and the Malfoys, a name taken from the antagonist to Harry Potter in the books of J.K. Rowling.
Matt Maggiacomo joined in as well, positioning himself in the middle of the room and embarking on a non-musical avant-garde performance as the Whomping Willow, the moniker he would later use for his own wizard rock band, The Whomping Willows.
While wizard rock was taking root on the East Coast, a similar movement was underway on the West Coast. After attending a Harry and the Potters concert at the University Bookstore in Seattle during the band’s 2004 tour, Kristina Horner and Elle Viane Sonnet from Renton, Washington, formed their own musical act, The Parselmouths. The duo recorded songs on their cellphones and then used them as voicemail greetings, posting their phone number on a LiveJournal account for promotion. It wasn’t long before The Parselmouths were getting their own gigs at Seattle-area libraries.
From there, the number of wizard rock bands across the country and around the world began to grow exponentially. While five or six existed in 2005, there were over forty active wizard rock bands the following year, and by 2009 the number had increased to an astronomical 800 worldwide. Woodstock-like musical festivals began to pop up, and on July 21, 2007 – the day the final Harry Potter book was released – Harry and the Potters performed with Draco and the Malfoys at Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in front of an estimated crowd of 16,000 fans.
While those are the high marks, the number of wizard rock bands inevitably decreased once all of the books and films in the Harry Potter series had been released. As amazing as it sounds, however, wizard rock still remains a force within Harry Potter fandom to this day. “Wizard rock is just under two decades old, but in this brief stretch of time, the community has experienced just as many developments as other older and more established musical genres,” Paul Thomas wrote in 2018. “Twists and turns, fortuitous accidents, brief feuds, and the possible threat of irrelevance. But wizard rock – to the surprise of many – has surmounted most obstacles, and while still being very much an underground phenomenon continues to strive.”
Danny & the Juniors proved to be prophetic in 1958 when they sang “Rock and Roll is here to stay,” as were The Who in 1971 with “Long Live Rock.” Suffice it to say that those same sentiments ring true today within the world of wizard rock.
Anthony Letizia
(PHOTOS TOP: Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys. BOTTOM: The Lovegoods, The Whomping Willows.)