(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…
I just wanted to apologize for the long, long delay in syncing our Tumblr posts and responding to folks. I work at an immigration legal nonprofit in the US, and as anyone following current US politics can probably guess, that’s been requiring rather a lot of my energy recently. I’ll be trying to get back to folks who’ve messaged us on WordPress over the next few days.
Do you take donations to help support your other location?
We didn’t have a donation system before, but your question prompted me to set one up! If you want to help us keep filkyeahfilk.com hosted, you can now donate at http://ko-fi.com/filkyeahfilk.
If you want to donate in something other than Ko-fi units of $3, you can message me off of anon or through the contact form on our site, and I can get in touch with my Paypal information. [Since it displays my actual name, I’m not comfortable posting a Paypal link online for the entire world to see.]
Keeping the site online costs me about $100 per year, so if folks wanted to help offset that, I would be incredibly grateful. Thanks for asking! <3
Hey everyone, we hopefully won’t be going anywhere, but with Tumblr currently hurtling towards its LiveJournal-style doom, this is a good time to remind you that we have this entire blog cross-posted at filkyeahfilk.com.
I own and independently host the site, so even if Tumblr goes, we’ll be around as long as I can keep paying the hosting fees. This weekend I also made sure that we have our own backups of any files that were originally hosted at Tumblr, so the music and images we’ve gathered should stick around regardless of what happens.
(And yeah, I know it was forever ago, sorry we’re bad at answering messages!)
Tumblr managed to eat your ask as I was replying to it, but the gist of it was that you were wondering if we had the lyrics to “Farewell Mother Russia” by Debra Sanders and Kathy Mar, since you couldn’t find them anywhere, and couldn’t hear all the words in the recording on YouTube.
I haven’t been able to find any lyrics online – I’m sure they’re written down in a songbook somewhere, but wherever it is, it hasn’t been digitized or transcribed. (If anyone does have the lyrics lying around somewhere, please let us know!)
That said, I was able to transcribe most of the words from the online recording. There’s just one word in the chorus I can’t quite catch – if anyone knows what it is, or has any corrections to my transcription, absolutely chime in!
I am the navigator of the Starship Enterprise,
And I am honor-bound by oath to guide her through the skies,
But greater than that honor is the pleasure that I feel
Each time I stop to realize that all my dreams are real.
[chorus:]
Farewell Mother Russia, I rise to meet the stars
And take my balalaika song beyond the moon and mars,
Though somewhere Mother Russia is white with winter snows,
I help to forge that starry trail, and go where no man goes.
Oh I have seen an entity who tortured me with rage,
And I have known an alien plague that cursed young men with age,
But I’ve discovered joys as well, and made a friend or two,
Drunk vodka, yes, and told some tales when every trek was through.
[chorus]
Forgive me sweet Irina, I never learned to love,
My eyes were always turned toward the starry skies above,
But if I had another chance to do what I must do,
Beside me on the Enterprise would be no one but you.