Filk music

Kare quotes Nick Smith of the Los Angeles Filkharmonics as stating:[5]It is a mixture of song parodies and original music, humorous and serious, about subjects like science fiction, fantasy, computers, cats, politics, the space program, books, movies, TV shows, love, war, death... and summarizes that "almost anything goes at a filksing".

[5] Filk has been defined as what is sung or performed by the network of people who originally gathered to sing at science fiction or fantasy conventions.

The social aspect of filk as contrasted with the "performer vs. audience" dichotomy of much of modern music was described in a speech by ethnomusicologist Sally Childs-Helton.

Wrai Ballard, then editor of the Spectator Amateur Press Society refused to publish it for fear that the article's bawdy content could get them into trouble with the Post Office under the Comstock Laws, but found the typo itself amusing, and mentioned it repeatedly;[11] thus, Jacobs's typo became the self-identified term for the genre/subculture while it was still an informal, unrecognized activity at conventions.

Its first documented deliberate use was by Karen Anderson in Die Zeitschrift für vollständigen Unsinn (The Journal for Utter Nonsense) No.

[12] At the 1974 World Science Fiction Convention author Bob Asprin announced publicly the creation of a group of volunteers he dubbed the Dorsai Irregulars, and a singing session ensued later that night.

Some specialized conventions focused entirely on filk, beginning with FilkCon in Chicago in 1979, organized by Margaret Middleton and Curt Clemmer, later joined by BayFilk in Northern California; the Ohio Valley Filk Fest (OVFF) in Columbus, Ohio; ConChord in Los Angeles and in San Diego,[14] California; GAFilk in Atlanta, Georgia;[15] Musicon in Nashville, Tennessee; FilKONtario near Toronto, Ontario; a rotating British filkcon, and one (NEFilk) in the northeastern US;[16] and the German FilkCONtinental.

Such a circle was lamented in a filk by Suzette Haden Elgin: "I've been here with my song at the ready since day before yesterday night.

This alerts the room, and specifically the (usually unintentional) interrupter, to be quiet and pay attention to the filker who has started performing.

When accepting induction into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2003, ethnomusicologist Sally Childs-Helton said, "We have taken our right to be creative and to literally 'play' in the best sense of that word."

Filk combines folk roots, live music circles, and dominant acoustical instrumentation, on the one hand, with high-tech cultural maintenance, on the other hand—a dense network of filkers' web pages, recordings, sound reinforcement at filk conventions, e-mail lists, and so on.

The eclectic content of filk frequently contains that assertion of human creativity, especially in connection with technology.

Because these themes cross international boundaries in filk, they are not explainable as a purely American optimism vis-a-vis technology (in contrast to Nye, 1996).

Newsgroup debates over such topics as whether "Weird Al" Yankovic is a filker suggest the deep feelings involved.

There is an opinion poll that runs during the year as well to help interested folk brainstorm ideas for the nominating ballot.