Quantcast Filk - Fan History Wiki
Personal tools

Filk

From Fan History Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Filk is a song about a certain fandom. The musical score for the song is based often based off another song. Some filksongs are parodies to the tunes of other songs; many others are original songs about aspects of fandom--books, tv shows, and movies are the most common, but others are about science and technology, or fandom life, especially at conventions, or filk itself.


Contents

[edit] History

This section needs more information.

I attended several August Party Conventions in the 70s. If memory serves, the word "filk"song was simply a typographical error that stuck in the corporate lingo. Originally the word was intended to be "folk"song.

Back in the days before computers, spell-checkers and readily available printers, a typo like "filk" for "folk" could easily go either unnoticed or uncorrected.

ref. source: captanne@aol.com


[edit] Historical Definitions

The following definition dates to the Roswell fandom on June 27, 2001:

filk: well-known songs, with lyrics altered to fit the show [1]


The following term dates to December 2001 in the Harry Potter fandom:

Filk: It's a song that's been written by an author to reflect certain themes/ideas/characters from their fandom. Compare with Song parody. Some of them are really quite ingenious and funny.[2]

The following definition is from the science fiction fandom and dates to November 2003:

filk
A song, often an amusing parody, with science ficti on or fantasy lyrics set to the tune of a folksong, popular song, or another fil ksong (there are some totally original filks). To filk is to write or sing filk songs, and filkers are those who do so.[3]

The following definition dates to December 2005 in the Harry Potter fandom:

filk: a musical parody. When the lyrics of a song are altered to fit a character or scene from canon. Unlike songfics, filks don't add narrative around lyrics to a song, they actually are the song, tweaked. [4]


The following definition dates to 2008 in the Superman fandom:

Filk - A fan fiction that is a parody of a song. For instance, if a writer writes "Superman Pie" which is a parody of "American Pie", this filk. [5]

[edit] Examples

Leslie Fish is famous for her original filk and her performances of these filks. Other well-known filk writers or performers include Mercedes Lackey, Tom Smith, Frank Hayes, Julie Ecklar, Jeff and Maya Bonhoff, Dr. Jane Robinson, Seanan McGuire, Bob Kanefsky, Jordan Kare and Meg Davis.

The NESFA (New England Science Fiction Association) Hymnal, first published in 1976, had over 150 songs about various aspects of fandom, including 17 songs about J. R. R. Tolkien's works and seven about Star Trek.

Well-known and popular filksongs include:
  • Fish's "Banned From Argo,"
  • "You Bash the Balrog" by Lee Gold,
  • "What Shall We Do With A Drunken Hobbit?",
  • the fannish version of "Old Time Religion," with several hundred verses,
  • "Velveteen" by Kathy Mar,
  • Jordan Kare's "Fire in the Sky."

Some songs not written within the fannish community are often sung at filksings, such as Weird Al Yankovic's "Yoda" and Nigel Russell's "White Collar Holler."

[edit] External Links

[edit] Filking culture and history

[edit] Filk conventions

[edit] Audio files for downloading (some may require registration)

[edit] Recording companies

[edit] Specialty retailers who carry filk

[edit] Miscellaneous

[edit] See also

This section needs more information.

[edit] Sources

Below is a partial list of articles and academic sources to help you continue to learn about this community.

  • Filk Hall of Fame acceptance speeches by Sally and Barry Childs-Helton.
  • Solomon H. Davidoff, "Filk:" A Study of Shared Musical Traditions and Related Phenomena among Fan Groups (M.A. thesis, Bowling Green State University, 1996). Bowling Green State University Thesis 6673. (At BGSU, call no. LD 4191 O6 No 6673.)
  • Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992), Chapter 8: "'Strangers No More We Sing': Filk Music, Folk Culture, and the Fan Community."
  • Roger D. Launius, "Got Filk? Lament For Apollo In Modern Science Fiction Folk Music" 5th International Astronautical Congress 2004; Vancouver; Canada; 4-8 Oct. 2004. pp. 1-11. abstract
  • David E. Nye, American Technological Sublime (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).
Retrieved from "http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/Filk"
Advertisement