My friend Tammy wrote a piece about the ladies of Wizard Rock (for the uninitiated, that’s bands spun out of the Harry Potter universe) and the new, growing subculture of, yes, Twilight rock.
But plenty of DIY communities, especially within the indie music scene, are male-dominated and less than female-friendly. The difference in wizard rock is the sheer number of women and girls making the music, and the extraordinary amount of encouragement wrockers and fans provide each other. Many men who are involved in wizard rock actively support their female peers, and the vast majority of wrock music avoids demeaning or stereotypical treatments of women.
Wizard rock has also paved the way for Twilight rock, a small but growing collection of musicians and bands devoted to making music inspired by Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling series. Mostly made up of solo acts and acoustic bands who sing from the perspective of the novel’s many characters, Twirock is overwhelmingly (and, given the book’s fan demographics, unsurprisingly) dominated by women. Katie Parr of the band Bella Rocks! says, “Obviously, Twirock is a branch of wizard rock. We’re still in our young stages, but we are related to them in almost every way.” But Twilight rock doesn’t seem to have the momentum that wizard rock had at the same time in its history, leaving one to wonder if Twilight’s female-dominated readership hinders the growth of its fan-based musical movement.
Most wizard and Twilight rockers will acknowledge that the treatment of women in their source materials is problematic, and some wrockers have also raised questions about gender issues in the scene.
I love when a creative work, whatever that work might be, spawns other creative work, and particularly since Twilight faces a lot of criticism for encouraging girls into traditional gender roles, it’s nice to see girls who love the books taking that love to a very untraditionally feminine place: fronting a rock band.
Of course, there’s the usual downside:
Although there’s no open feud, and a few wizard rockers even have Twirock side projects, Twirockers are often received in the same way that the public tends to characterize all Twilight fans: as screaming, silly girls.
Still, it’s a start. Maybe the more active and involved Twilight fans get, the easier it will be for people to take them seriously–at least as seriously as grown men who call themselves “Harry and the Potters.”
August 22nd, 2009 at 7:23 am
I don’t see why Twilight fans can instead just listen to old Police albums. There are some songs about stalkers and obsessiveness that fans of the books can relate too.
Unless, of course, you find a guy staring at you while you are sleeping the entire night romantic. I’m not sure what to recommend then, maybe a therapist.
August 22nd, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Please don’t blame the fact that “Twirock” isn’t taking off on the female fanbase.
Blame it on the terrible source material.
DRACO AND THE MALFOYS FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!
September 23rd, 2009 at 2:52 pm
The difference between the Wizard Rock movement and Twi-Rock is that Wizard Rock was fairly innovative. While it’s not the first genre to have received inspiration from fiction, it IS the first to have developed it in this particular way. It has its own Library of Congress heading, and the music itself reaches farther than summary of plotlines. It plays to the underlying themes of JK Rowling’s books, which are fairly global insofar as how many people can relate to them.
Twi-Rock is about a book series that is harder to relate to in general. Not everyone prances around being “amazing” to everybody else…not everyone obsesses over the hot guy at school who then, conveniently, falls madly in love with her and sneaks in her window at night, is overly-possessive, and even mentally abusive. Not everyone can relate to that. And not everyone wants to. It’s harder to find as many themes in the Twilight series to relate to on a personal level.. Even though the books are entertaining in spite of their mediocre (if not bad) writing, (I counted at least 4 typos and wrongly used spellings of words in the first 50 pages of New Moon…and that’s technical error and has nothing to do with syntax and overall execution) there’s just less of an appeal.
People who listen to Wizard Rock, and who become actively involved in the Harry Potter fandom in general, tend to be intelligent and educated. Twilight seems to appeal more to people who haven’t read as many books. That’s a very broad overstatement in both cases…but I’m just making a point.
The fact that Twi-Rock isn’t taking off has nothing to do with fanbase of “silly, screaming girls”…Wizard Rock deals with those exact same issues. Even some people within the Harry Potter fandom view Wizard Rock fans as the less-intelligent, screaming fangirls.
The difference certainly comes from the appeal of the source material, as Emu mentioned before me. And it probably has something to do with the novelty that was the development of Wizard Rock as compared to Twi-Rock simply following a trend where there is already a small market.
It might ALSO have something to do with Wizard Rock having begun as early as 2000 with a single song, and then in 2002 when Harry and the Potters got their start. 2004-05 was when more of the “prominent” Wrock bands started…so they’ve been working at establishing themselves, their market, and the movement for quite some time.
Twi-Rock is still a very young scene. They can’t expect to just appear and achieve instant recognition or success. But if they are to be expected to make it in the long run, they’ll need to reach beyond summary to the overall themes…and doing so WHILE sticking to canon is going to be a real challenge for them as far as maintaining appeal.
October 21st, 2009 at 10:35 am
The REAL reason why TwiRock hasn’t had the same success as Wizard Rock is because of the primary difference between the two. Unlike Harry Potter, the Twilight series’ has soundtracks composed of REAL musicians, such as Muse, Linkin Park, Thom Yorke, etc. The TwiRock musicians are no less talented than the Wizard Rock musicians, but they can’t compete with the popularity of the musicians on the movie soundtrack, so they are not taken as seriously by the Twilight fans.