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Introduction Music scholarship across genres is often concerned with music's metaphysical and ephemeral effects on individuals, communities, and society. These scholarly framings constitute a concept that we refer to here as “the magic of music”. Using this framing, this article addresses the ways that the magic is undermined by a range of worldly, non-magical realities, using the case study of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and their devastating effects on the previously thriving live music industry in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. The magic of music includes such aspects as the intangible sounds of music, the mysterious practice of creative music-making, and the transformative effects on audiences and others who participate in music culture. We begin with a broad discussion of the sonic properties of music as a form of magic—a common rhetoric that has been used across the world regardless of genre or cultural origin. Next, we turn to the social contexts surrounding music, such as live music settings. De Jong and Lebrun argue that “the power of music” can create “moments of rare, intense and direct interactions between individuals” that are often described as magical, and that “magic is, in this sense, understood as a perfectly natural and plausible, and not supernatural, experience, even if its intensity and rarity in one's life makes it extra-ordinary” (4). We use this framing of “music as magic” in our consideration of the specific context of Australia’s music industry from 2020 to the present. We posit that the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside government-sanctioned lockdowns, cultural shifts such as an increased focus on poor working conditions and risk in music work, and detrimental arts funding policies worked together to effectively break the spell of “music as magic” for industry and patrons. Finally, we draw on key examples from popular music studies, industry reports and new government policies, to call attention to recent proposals to rehabilitate the magic through a re-enchantment of music and the music industry. Feels like Magic: The Social Context of Music Music is a form of organised sound and silence that people across cultures, history, and places, have articulated as possessing magical properties (Nettl). Music is not only sound waves but also a social category, thus the notion of magic extends beyond sound into everyday discourse in the social realm of music, which will be the focus of this article. Audiences/listeners may describe their own response to music as a magical feeling, stemming from the performer’s ability to convey emotion and provide a performance that “mirrors the performer’s [own] deep connection to the music” (Loeffler 19). Such ‘magical moments’ of deep connection among audience members and between audiences and performers may be elicited in various ways. Examples include the sense of emotional self-recognition found via personal lyrics, resonance with unique vocal timbres, or the shared sense of belonging that develops with fellow audience members, including strangers, during musical events (Anderson). For the latter, the magic (or “magick”, a spelling associated with stagecraft) of ritualised music performance is a common element of Paganism in music performance, with some popular music artists implicitly “appropriat[ing] the Pagan subculture's symbols for artistic inspiration and commercial gain”, presenting themselves as contemporary conduits that reconnect audiences to old magics (Sweeney Smith 91; see also Weston). When it comes to these sorts of ideas about magic and music, performers and audiences routinely make claims about magical musical powers such as “talent”, an idea deployed to describe the skills and charisma of certain musicians, and “creativity”, a “magic ingredient” (see McRobbie) that people who write or produce music are supposed to possess in order to perform their craft (Gadir 61–4; Gross and Musgrave 10, 22; see also Nairn). Music of all forms can provide profound affective experiences, regardless of how it is made and who plays it. There is also a magical discourse present in popular music that has reached millions of people in a globalised musical world dominated by recordings. For as long as music has had a mass market, its magic properties (as articulated in multiple ways across history) have been a selling point for musicians, records, and concerts. The recorded music industry’s very selection process is rooted in the idea that “creativity is based on ‘little bits of magic’ and that success is down to luck and timing” (Gross and Musgrave 140). Music writing (scholarly, criticism, journalism) tends to focus on these magical properties: from the sublime nature of a musical work and its form to the phenomenology of sound and affective experience of music, and even the inexplicable, elusive ‘talent’ of particular musicians. Jimi Hendrix labelled his music work “completely, utterly a magic science” (Clarke 195), while Joni Mitchell “consistently referred to Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter, and Jaco Pastorius as ‘magicians’ and ‘shamans,’ thereby conferring a susceptibility to the miraculous upon the musicians she most respected” (Lloyd 124). As we show below, this conflation of magical and religious concepts is evident elsewhere in discourse on the intangibility of musical talent. Some genres of music have emphasised the idea of music as magic more than others. For example, scholarship on electronic dance music (EDM) has embraced the concept of “DJ as shaman” (Brewster and Broughton 19; Luckman 133; Rietveld “Introduction” 1; Rietveld This Is Our House) and the nightclub as a “pseudo-religious pilgrimage site” (Becker and Woebs 59), extending Benjamin’s argument for art’s origins in service of ritual (24). Miller has further alluded to a mystical DJ craft, both as a performer quoted in music media (Gallagher) and in his own academic writing: “gimme two records and I’ll make you a universe” (DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid 127; Miller 497). Shamanism is also explored in rock music discourse (see Kennedy 81–90). Notions of musical magic extend beyond performances and personalities into the recording studio. Music mastering is commonly labelled a “dark art” (Hepworth-Sawyer and Golding 241; Hinksman 13; Nardi 211), and the music studio as a site where magic is made (Anthony 43, 194). Rolling Stone magazine has even deployed a recurrent editorial phrase—“the magic that can set you free”—to distinguish the authenticity of rock from pop music (Frith 164–5). We argue that two key ruptures of the last few years—namely, widespread lockdown policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, and emerging discussions on poor working conditions and harms in the music industries—have had the effect of breaking the magic spell of music. There has been a groundswell of musicians, commentators, and scholars pausing to query (and in some cases overturn entirely) some of the illusions that the music industry constructs around musicians. We use the city of Naarm/Melbourne in Australia to draw out some of these trends. When the Magic Dies: Breaking the Spell of the Music Industry The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in lengthy lockdowns in the city of Naarm/Melbourne. In total, over a two-year period, the city spent 262 days in home confinement under strict orders from the government, with limited travel and no access to the usual amenities of the city, including all public in-person entertainment (Jose). This had a profound effect on the state’s musicians and the music industries that service them. It completely closed the city’s music venues for an extended period, driving musicians into alternative, virtual modes of performance (Vincent) and driving other music workers into non-music-related employment. For a city often touted as “the live music capital of Australia” (see Homan et al.), the lockdowns effectively broke the spell of music as a key employer and as a driver of arts practice and social experience in Melbourne. Quite suddenly, the lockdown periods revealed the precarious lives of musicians away from the stage. Once stripped of the “magical” quality of live performance, musicians’ work and practice appeared both more complex and more routine. The COVID-19 pandemic broke the spell of music that takes place in social settings. At the start of 2020, live music was one of the first activities to be banned. Live music relies on people being near one another, often in enclosed spaces. It often involves people on stage and in the crowd singing, an activity identified early in the pandemic as an effective method of spreading the virus. These attributes, together with its status as “entertainment” rather than as an essential activity, meant that live music gatherings became entirely illegal (Strong and Cannizzo). Even as lockdowns were lifted, live music was one of the last activities to be reinstated, albeit with access restricted in various ways. People continued to engage with music via other means, for example, through virtual live-streamed performances and platform-based audio streaming. Globally, there was an increase in people listening to older, nostalgic music (Yeung)—an indicator that music was still being used for its magical self-soothing capacities, alleviating the worst pandemic anxieties. However, the closure of the Victorian live music sector drew attention to the material conditions of music making in new ways (“Losses Continue”). Many musicians and music workers could not take advantage of government schemes to support workers who had lost their income during the pandemic (Triscari). This highlighted what was already known to music industry workers: that their work was insecure. It also revealed the contradictions within government music policies: on the one hand, music’s utility for city branding, on the other, little regard for what support and resources are required for it to take place. As more and more musicians used the pandemic to
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