I gotta admit that I’m just using you to pass the message on to the rest of the filk community on tumblr. I noticed that due to the covid-19 situation, there was a virtual filk con earlier this summer. I’d like to suggest that there would be more virtual filk events (cons or even just small filk circle type things) in the future, too, even after the covid-situation has passed. As a broke younger generation nerd from a country where filk has never been a thing, getting into the filk community 1/3
2/3 and getting to know filkers, has been very hard to me, and I feel like if there were more virtual filk events, it would be easier to me at least to meet more filkers (even if I can’t even write good poetry in English or any other language, let alone make music, I can’t play any instrument, and my singing voice is about as good as a crow’s,
3/3 so I know I don’t really bring anything into the filk community to be honest), and I’d really like that! And I’m guessing I can’t be the only one with this problem? Please tell me I’m not?
Hey Nony! I know filkers are already talking about the prospect of continuing to do online filk events after the pandemic has passed, precisely because of the wider participation they allow. Even those of us who regularly go to filk conventions have been enjoying the chance to see and hear people from farther off than we usually get to travel – and for those who almost never get the chance at all, virtual events are that much more important. Personally I’m hoping that the virtual events do outlast the pandemic, and I suspect they will.
For now, there are definitely more events planned while the pandemic is still ongoing! Here’s some ways to find them:
Filkstreams.org is a repository of sorts for tracking upcoming virtual filk events, including concerts, conventions, and open circles. It’s not always comprehensive but people are working on that.
Friends of Filkis a Pacific Northwest filk organization that hosts monthly filk circles (now virtual for the duration of the pandemic), and their website hosts a very useful event calendar.
F Is For Filker is a Facebook group for filkers – I’m not on Facebook so I don’t know very much about it, but it was recommended through …
#filkhaven is a Discord server for the filk community, and an excellent place to meet filkers. The #schedules channel there is a place where people often post news about upcoming events.
Also, to address your parenthetical, for you and for anybody else reading this who’s wondering the same thing: please don’t feel like you need to “bring something” to the filk community in order to join it! The community exists for the people in it, not the other way around; if you want to be part of it, it doesn’t matter if (or how well) you sing or play or compose, you’re still welcome.
In the last few years, filk has lost two major recording engineers, Chris “Keris” Croughton and Harold M. Stein. Like many filkers, Harold was a great collector of tapes and CDs, but his collection went beyond that, into raw board feeds from filk concerts and the steadfast recording of housefilks and filk circles at conventions. Harold would tirelessly run around with his dozen Zoom recorders, capturing every detail, sometimes in quadruplicate. He also acquired the recording collections of many filk stalwarts, including Wail Songs founder Bob Laurent.
Harold also collected songbooks at a prodigious rate. Not just professionally produced songbooks from Wail Songs and Off Centaur, but also peoples’ personal collections, which he duly scanned in. And we still have all those files, many of them unprocessed, but we now have a way to continue his work.
If you’ve attended lots of filk cons, or regional filk circles, please help us identify audio clips of voices and songs. If you haven’t, please help us out on identifying songbooks. All your work helps us extend Harold’s dream.
Thank you!
@meravhoffman
Director, Harold M. Stein Memorial Filk Archive
Welcome to our diverse little clan
Don’t worry you’re not good enough, come grow with us
We’ll help you with your melody, we’ll catch you if you trip and fall
We’ll celebrate the art you choose to share with the world
“Filk in the Lobby” by Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff, which I can only assume is based on a true story. The songs referenced in the lyrics are Fire in the Sky by Jordin Kare and March of Cambreadth by Heather Alexander.
Scottish songwriter Alex Campbell also translated the Danish translation of “Anna Lovinda” to English; that version can also be found on Youtube. Both the Danish and the English versions are very faithful to the Bye’s Norwegian original.
Hi! Sorry if this is a stupid question, but do you think poetry could be considered filk too? Because I wanna try writing some filk stuff, but I’m terrible with music, and even changing the lyrics of already existing songs so that it still works with the music seems like a bit too big challenge to me (especially in English, since it’s not my first language), but I can write poems. Not very good poems, I have to admit that, but poems anyway.
Definitely! I’ve heard a few people read poetry at filk events. Sometimes it’s a song they don’t feel confident enough to sing but want to share anyway, and sometimes because they found or wrote a very filkish poem that was never intended to be sung.
Go forth! Write things!! And there’s always a chance that someone else will be able to set something you write to music later!
Do you think the song “Pioneers Over c” by Van Der Graaf Generator could be considered filk? It’s prog rock rather than folk, but it is about the first astronauts to surpass the speed of light, who then find themselves sort of disconnected from time. I suppose it’s more like speculative fiction in song form than science fiction fandom, though. Idk, that’s why I’m asking y’all.
It is if you want it to be! Because definitions are made up and only exist as long as they are useful to us. I definitely thing filk is a genre doesn’t ever need to sound folk-ish, it just often does because 1) it evolved out of the 60′s folk movement and 2) it’s an easy style to write and perform in for amateur musicians. But heck, there’s rap filk, there’s no reason there should be prog rock filk…except that prog rock typically requires at LEAST six musical instruments and electricity, and so is more conducive to staged concerts than song circles.
….but there’s plenty of filk on concert stages, with electric instruments, with the extensive arrangement, rehearsal, and setup you get in prog rock. I saw a prog rock band at a con, and while it wasn’t billed as filk, being at a con makes you basically filk.
As for whether it’s science fiction fandom music – if you’re in the science fiction fandom, and feel like it’s relevant, and you like it, it’s science fiction fandom music. That’s why songs about cats and Shakespeare are considered filk, even though they have heck all to do with science fiction. They might be pretty far removed from Star Trek, but a whole bunch of people like all of those things, and that unites them. Fandom is about the people, more than the content, in the end.
Anyway, I’d say a case can be made for calling it filk, and if you want to make that case that’s fine by me. It’s a few steps removed from what I might suggest as some kind of archetypal filk song, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t one. It’s like how a dachshund and a wolfhound are both dogs. They’re just very different dogs, and you just have to be aware that traits of most dogs do not necessarily apply to these dogs. If filk had a real dictionary definition it would have a dozen subdefinitions, and one of those would probably say “songs about science fiction concepts” and that’s this!
It’s the voice that’s always breaking
That never learns to scan.
It’s the song of grim war-making
The ever-crying man.
It’s the one who won’t be cheerful
Who cannot find the tune.
And the fan, afraid of smiling
Who sings of wreck and ruin.
