Years and years ago, when I went to my first con, there was something weird on the schedule—“filk.” I didn’t get to attend that filk session, but when I did get a chance to go to one I learned that it’s a genre of music particular to fandom. I was intrigued by what I heard, but didn’t get a chance to learn much more about it for a few more years. Some of it is beautiful, more of it is funny, and its appeal is largely based on being a sort of big in-joke among people who are into science fiction and fantasy. I’m afraid Sam and I were guilty of leading minors into committing filk. After we explained filk to our kids, they came up with many Pokémon filk songs.
It’s been a few years since I last attended a housefilk, but generally speaking they are marvelous fun marked by good music and great company. I did attend GaFilk a few years back, and it was a wonderful relaxacon.
General Sites
- The Virtual Filksing is a great way to find a variety of filk MP3s in one place. I’m particularly fond of Tech Support by Jeffrey Hitchin—every techie I know likes that one.
- Interfilk
Filkers
- They don’t bill themselves as filkers, but a lot of The Four Bitchin’ Babes songs certainly fit right in. I’m Dyslexic and LAFF are two of my favorites.
- To some extent Leslie Fish seems to be filk—everybody else does her songs and she’s certainly prolific!
- I’ve heard that Weird Al Yankovic hates to be called a filker, for some reason. I think everyone has heard at least one of his songs at some point in time, so I wanted to point out that his songs are pretty good examples of filk.
- Alec Alexander James is an amazing, prolific musician.
- Kathy Mar
- Mercedes Lackey has done many songs related to her Valdemar universe, as well as some unrelated filk. Apparently, when she writes the lyrics and Leslie Fish does the music for a song, it’s called a Leslac. That’s also the name of a troublesome bard in Lackey’s Tarma and Kethry stories. Feline American Princess is a Leslac, too, and it’s very funny—I just can’t figure out how Lackey channeled our late cat Shelley when she wrote it.
- Urban Tapestry
- I figure I would have liked “Rubenesque” for its lyrics no matter what I thought of The Duras Sisters—but I like them. “Ivanova’s Lament” was one of the first filk songs I ever encountered.