“Mermaids and Queers,” our song based on this Tumblr post about asexuals and sirens. How would mermaids lure people of various sexualities?
This video has captions and ASL interpretation, thanks to the hard work of Kat Sharp (Sharp Productions) and Judi Miller (interpreter). We recorded this in lockdown for our virtual concert at the 2020 Ohio Valley Filk Festival.
The professionally-recorded version can be found on our third album, Swearing is Caring.
This one required a LOT of squinting at Wookiepedia articles and [gasp] doing actual calculations to figure out Star Wars distances. Please appreciate the fact that this is the first filk I’ve had to pull out a calculator for.
As always, I’m giving blanket permission to anyone with a better voice than I have who wants to record this. Just make sure to tag me so I can go listen to it!
Corellian Spacers
Farewell and adieu to you Twi’lek ladies
Farewell and adieu you Rylothean maids
For we have been recalled all back to Corellia
And in our return we must not be delayed
[CHORUS]:
So we’ll rant and we’ll roar like Corellian spacers
We’ll rant and we’ll roar in the hyperspace glow
Until we make docking at Centerpoint Station
From Ryloth we’ve one-twenty parsecs to go
[CHORUS]
I’m the daughter of smugglers and true merchant traders
The stars call my blood and among them I roam
But I was born by the old Coronet spaceport
And now the Five Brothers are calling me home
[CHORUS]
We’ll head to the core and nudge the ship spinward
Head onward past Christophsis’ crystal green mines
We’ll keep our course coreward and true to the Run lanes
And soon we’ll be passing the Middle Rim line
[CHORUS]
Past Radnor and New Cov and Allanteen’s shipyards
Onwards past Denon’s great city so wide
Through to the Colonies and on to the Core worlds
‘Til betwixt the Twin Worlds our good ship will glide
[CHORUS]
Now let us drink up ‘til our mugs are all empty
Drink up that good whiskey, I’ll spot you a glass
Here’s to the health of all of us spacers
And here’s to the health of my true hearted lass
please listen to this folk song warning you about how a gay space rebel is going to appear out of nowhere and wreck your shit, and also he fought a bear
(I realized I’m dumb and can just add them here, I’ll still tag though, jic @lesbianomens)
A disclaimer: As far as I know, the one you have above is the only explicitly gay filk song with recordings available online. I am 100% sure others exist!! But, I’ve not found them (if anyone has links to more, PLEASE send them my way!) SO, the songs here are ones I’ve got tagged as queer/gay/lgbt in my library, sometimes for textual reasons (Archetype Cafe, It Suits You), sometimes for thematic (noted below), and sometimes just because the #vibes are undeniable.
If there’s an ** next to a song, it’s filk more broadly, not necessarily a space shanty, but the pickins are slim and they’re all good songs. This fall mostly into the sea/space songs sub-genre of shanty (in that they would be sung when the crew is at leisure, not while they’re doing work. hence the lack of a pulling/pushing rhythm for most).
Signy Mallory by Heather Alexander/Leslie Fish (written by Mercedes Lackey; not explicitly gay, but oh man the Vibes)
Somebody Will by Sassafrass (Look, LOOK, this song changed my life. I’m not kidding. It’s all about fighting for a future you may never see, but knowing that someone out there will live that future, again, not explicitly gay, but thematically)
Long Distance Transmission by @astriiformes (No pronouns, a song of longing and wanting someone who’s far away, hopeful and sad all at once)
In Flight by @idiopathicsmile (written by @soemily, inspired by star wars (Poe Dameron I think specifically?))
**I’m Your Moon by Jonothan Colton (technically about a literal moon, spiritually though? about saying fuck societies expectations and being who you are and with who you love)
The Seas of Space by Mark Heiman (again, no pronouns, a song about traveling out into the wonders of the vast expanse with your beloved at your side, also about helping each other through the loss of your old home, ultimately hopeful I think)
In the true sea shanty genre there are some obvious gay™ choices that could be easily rerecorded as space shanties (The Handsome Cabin Boy (warning for possible gender dysphoria issues, not sure how to tag/warn past that?), Leave Her Johnny Leave Her (technically the ‘her’ is a ship, but uh, I’ve never heard this sung as if that were the case), and Don’t Forget Your Old Shipmate, to name a few). So, if anyone out there is less tone deaf than me, do us a favor huh? There are even more if we step outside f shanties into traditional folk (which was sung on ships as well) but this post is already long enough.
A minor correction: while that recording of Seas of Space is sung by Mark Heiman, it was originally written by
Suzette Haden Elgin.
The only other Gay Space Shanty I can think of is Make it So by Annwn. While the lyrics aren’t *explicitly* set in space, it’s not so subtle Picard/Riker slash.
But yeah, thank you for pointing out that there are tragically few songs in this genre, I now have a document open titled “the gay space shanty project” and am brainstorming trad shanties I can adapt to fix that…
– the brain mod
A delightful commenter on our WordPress left this addition: Captain Jack and His Crew by Bob Kanefsky. (Not set in space, but very definitely a gay sea shanty).
(I realized I’m dumb and can just add them here, I’ll still tag though, jic @lesbianomens)
A disclaimer: As far as I know, the one you have above is the only explicitly gay filk song with recordings available online. I am 100% sure others exist!! But, I’ve not found them (if anyone has links to more, PLEASE send them my way!) SO, the songs here are ones I’ve got tagged as queer/gay/lgbt in my library, sometimes for textual reasons (Archetype Cafe, It Suits You), sometimes for thematic (noted below), and sometimes just because the #vibes are undeniable.
If there’s an ** next to a song, it’s filk more broadly, not necessarily a space shanty, but the pickins are slim and they’re all good songs. This fall mostly into the sea/space songs sub-genre of shanty (in that they would be sung when the crew is at leisure, not while they’re doing work. hence the lack of a pulling/pushing rhythm for most).
Signy Mallory by Heather Alexander/Leslie Fish (written by Mercedes Lackey; not explicitly gay, but oh man the Vibes)
Somebody Will by Sassafrass (Look, LOOK, this song changed my life. I’m not kidding. It’s all about fighting for a future you may never see, but knowing that someone out there will live that future, again, not explicitly gay, but thematically)
Long Distance Transmission by @astriiformes (No pronouns, a song of longing and wanting someone who’s far away, hopeful and sad all at once)
In Flight by @idiopathicsmile (written by @soemily, inspired by star wars (Poe Dameron I think specifically?))
**I’m Your Moon by Jonothan Colton (technically about a literal moon, spiritually though? about saying fuck societies expectations and being who you are and with who you love)
The Seas of Space by Mark Heiman (again, no pronouns, a song about traveling out into the wonders of the vast expanse with your beloved at your side, also about helping each other through the loss of your old home, ultimately hopeful I think)
In the true sea shanty genre there are some obvious gay™ choices that could be easily rerecorded as space shanties (The Handsome Cabin Boy (warning for possible gender dysphoria issues, not sure how to tag/warn past that?), Leave Her Johnny Leave Her (technically the ‘her’ is a ship, but uh, I’ve never heard this sung as if that were the case), and Don’t Forget Your Old Shipmate, to name a few). So, if anyone out there is less tone deaf than me, do us a favor huh? There are even more if we step outside f shanties into traditional folk (which was sung on ships as well) but this post is already long enough.
A minor correction: while that recording of Seas of Space is sung by Mark Heiman, it was originally written by Suzette Haden Elgin.
The only other Gay Space Shanty I can think of is Make it So by Annwn. While the lyrics aren’t *explicitly* set in space, it’s not so subtle Picard/Riker slash.
But yeah, thank you for pointing out that there are tragically few songs in this genre, I now have a document open titled “the gay space shanty project” and am brainstorming trad shanties I can adapt to fix that…
so i recorded this song months ago, and am finally posting it now because
(1) i am currently hardcore procrastinating on my schoolwork, and
(2) today marks two months since i first started T, and when i was listening to this track again i realized just how much my voice…doesn’t sound like that anymore.
it was the first moment that really hit home just how much things are changing in my life right now. i’ve come so far, and i am so different from the person i was just two months ago – who will i be two months from now? how can i know, until i get there?
…so, existential crisis aside, enjoy! once again, shout out to @rabbittmouth, @dog-of-ulthar, and tom lehrer for inspiration. lyrics are below the cut!
My OTHER favorite Child Ballad is “King Henry,” because it is just… bizarre. A horse and an unspecified number of greyhounds and hawks get murdered in this one, but no humans this time.
Killing your own pets to feed them to a strange giant woman who just barged into your hunting lodge TOTALLY sounds like the sort of thing a king would have to do, doesn’t it?
Wish I knew which King Henry this song was written about, because I unquestionably accept its events as historical fact.
Don’t ever listen to any version of this song other than Heather Alexander’s, because you will inevitably be disappointed. (well, the Steeleye Span version is also acceptable)
Because this post is getting attention again, I would like to append something wonderful that I recently learned. The musician you hear here is trans and now goes by the name of Alexander James Adams. Because of his obsession with fairies n’ shit, he steadfastly maintains the kayfabe story that his previous self, Heather, was a changeling and he, Alexander, was the child she replaced, but won the right to return from fairyland in a “Devil Went Down to Georgia” style fiddle duel with the faerie queen. This is a song he wrote that tells the whole story.
i’m sorry i’m adding this after already reblogging but??? the second song is a refilk of his previous song recorded pre-transition!!! which has more of his Epic Fiddle Playing
This is a a super-personal song, so of course it takes me a zillion words to talk about why.
“We’re Not Friends” wasn’t going to be released until 2017, on Din of Thieves. But a couple of months ago, SJ Tucker posted that the mood out there – she tours a lot – was the worst she’d ever seen it, and called upon everybody she knew to release their most uplifting stuff, because maybe we can’t do much, but we can at least do that, because maybe, just maybe, it would help. And having written this in a flurry and surprising my band with it right before a really big show – and not just saying, ‘we’re doing this’ but saying ‘we’re doing this and closing the show with it,’ I thought, “Okay. I’m in.”
What this is about… at the topmost level, it’s about representation, and what it means to those who are not represented in media and culture when suddenly you’re there.
You see, there’s this whole history for queers – if you’re represented at all in media, it’s somewhere in the range of “psychotic” to “tragic,” and there is – historically – no such thing as a happy ending for the faggots. TV Tropes has several sections on this; you can start with “Bury your Gays” and it gets worse from there. The number of exceptions – well, in the Anglosphere, you can count them on one hand, and arguably on one finger, before a couple of years ago.
And that won’t sound like much to most of you, who have had this since before you can remember, and got sick of it, and started writing other and more complicated and more interesting things, and that’s cool because those are good and important stories too. But you still go back to these happy endings for comfort, for relief, and even if you don’t, you have the comfort of knowing it’s there. Hell, you’re swimming in it. The message is: this is normal, this happens, this is good. You can get this.
By contrast, the message we get is: die alone in misery, faggot.
So when Korra and Asami in Avatar: The Legend of Korragot that happy ending – the walking off into the sunset together holding hands ending – it sent shock waves through queer fandom. (And also through straight fandom, and a fair chunk of it reacted in rage. Not all, not even most, but a lot. Go look at the Wikipedia edit history around the end of the show, as it was me and one other person fighting every other editor about it.)
Seeing that, getting that ending – it felt like a giant aching wound in my brain I hadn’t even known was there suddenly got healed, like something deep and old and broken stopped hurting, and I’m still getting emotional as I type about it right now.
You can go look that up yourself, if you like YouTube reaction videos. People breaking down, sobbing. It took weeks to process what happened. That’s how much of a revelation it was for a lot of us.
But this isn’t a song specifically about Korra and Asami being canon girlfriends at the end of Avatar: The Legend of Korra, and it’s not about any of the other “red/blue” couples, as Tumblr likes to call them. It’s about our reaction to seeing ourselves in characters when we never have before, and it’s trying to tell you a story about stepping through getting this ‘hey, what’s going on’ idea, then going ‘nah, that can’t be right,’ then going ‘wait, this looks like a thing, but we don’t get that so it can’t be,’ then the shock and – for a while – outright incomprehension when it is.
When it’s us. When, for once, we get the happy ending, we get the walk into the sunset, we get the tomorrow ever after. We’re not friends with them, we aren’t their lovers, we aren’t people they know – but they’re like us, and they don’t end in horror and pain, so maybe we don’t have to either.
Maybe the future does have a place for us.
It’s one thing to know that intellectually. It’s another to have a story which supports it. Stories shape reality, or at least, people’s decisions about reality. Stories matter.
And that doesn’t just apply to dykes. Gods know there are a lot of oppressed groups – particularly racial groups, particularly the African diaspora, particularly in the US – who get the blunt end of the story stick.
Getting this story, then, is for us very much a turning of the tides – hence, the subject of this post. And if there’s a time when we all need that sea change, it’s now, in the dog days of 2016. At very least, we need to feel like it’s possible – I think we could all use that hope.
That’s a lot to try to pack into a song, but I’ve done my damnedest to do it. I just hope it speaks to you, too.
be prepared,
for the gays are coming back!
be prepared,
to face their gay and undead wrath!
be prepared to face the monsters that you made
when you said our love would send us to our grave.
be prepared,
for every tragic story told
there’s a corpse
ready to come back for your soul.
you thought “oh what a plot twist!” when you killed her for the grief
of her girlfriend’s watching horror, or his husband’s disbelief…
now for each gay who had to die, it’s eye for eye,
so be prepared!
be prepared,
for the gays are gonna rise!
be prepared,
‘cause now they’re coming for your lives!
when we’re dead make sure to bury us real deep,
or we’ll come back up to catch you when you sleep!
you couldn’t bear
to keep the queers around,
but don’t bur-
-y what you can’t keep underground.
is it too much to ask for, for a story we survive?
is it too much to ask for, for the queer kid not to die?
“apparently” the undead hordes declare,
well, be prepared!
@seananmcguire‘s Wicked Girls is a favorite of mine, and though it’s not explicitly about the lgbt community, for a while I’ve been thinking about it as such. But hey, filk is all about adaptation and the meanings the audience gets from a song – so a few days ago I decided to write my own version.
My Wicked Girls is dedicated to all of the fictional wlw who deserved better than their narratives gave them, and to all the real wlw who deserve the world.