Harry Popster: In the third Harry Potter film there’s a scene where Professor Lupin puts a record on, just before HP practises some monster-fighting, so Harry’s battle with his worst fears has an incongruous (but effective) trad jazz soundtrack. The good-natured, slightly melancholy music works very well as a signature for the likeable Lupin – but it was still an odd moment, because otherwise I don’t think anyone in the Harry Potter films or books ever listens to music.
In the films it’s hardly surprising – having a real or even invented song on the soundtrack would puncture the bombast/magic (delete to taste). The Potter films have been remarkably restrained as far as blockbusters go – Messrs. John and Sting uncalled-on; Enya and Lennox given the day off. Instead as the end credits roll we get yet more monumental John Williams guff.
In the books, though? Lots of the appeal of Rowling’s world is centred on a whimsical transmigration of real-life elements. So we get wizard postal services, banks, scandal-sheets, sporting pin-ups… and even a Quidditch team which attracts glory-hunting fans. A magical boy band or enchanted stereo shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. It might just be that Rowling thinks pop is irrelevant to her readers’ (and by extension her characters’) lives. But the milieu of the Potter books – steam trains, boarding schools, etc. – is essentially pre-pop. One of the clever things about them is how finely Rowling judges which elements of the adult or adolescent world can make the transition to Hogwarts et al. without damaging its aura. Pop music isn’t just technological and muggle-ish, it’s also alien to most of the childrens’ classics Harry Potter harks back to. Characters in Alan Garner and Susan Cooper books certainly listen to pop – but Harry Potter is emphatically not a Garner-style childrens’ book.