Filk: folk music for science fiction fans.
Science fiction and folk music had a baby, and its name is filk. This little-known DIY music subculture involves songs composed and performed by sci-fi and fantasy fans, and revolves around fandom themes. Today on Boing Boing tv, Xeni visits the Consonance Filk Convention in the Bay Area, and learns that it is possible to combine vampires, computer virii, LOLcats, Battlestar Galactica, Tolkien slashfic, string theory, and World of Warcraft characters in a single Klingon lyric sung to the tune of "Kum Ba Ya."
Update: Special thanks to Brooke Lunderville, "the Banjo Goddess of British Columbia," whose smiling face you see above in the opening sequence for this episode.
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Hilarious! Love it...but the woman's hair is AWOL. All Filk lovers are welcome to join my 3 day walk team.
Heh, I always thought filk was pretty well heard of, actually. It's a staple at conventions. Most of it to my experience runs toward the lame.
Great episode!
Those people remind me of some folks I met in Denver that had been attending Rocky Horror almost from the beginning-- passionate, life-long fans-- the kind of people that devote their lives to creating content and art for their respective fandom, and truly become part of the mythologies they celebrate.
I noticed one thing that I think unintentionally changes the tone of the episode when viewed embedded.
At the end, after the last song, the lady in the kerchief (introduced as “Mary Creasey”) says to Xeni “See! We've got you doing it too," and the player jumps to the beginning, frozen on the plate frame with the caption "I want to die."
The timing makes it look like that is Xeni's response to kerchief lady. I'm pretty sure the intent is not to make fun of these quirky, neat people, but that final jump back (an accident of software, no doubt) when playing the video in-browser sort of changes the whole mood to something a little more bitter and ironic than I suppose is intended:
Or I may just be nitpicking about something that is trivial and makes no sense to anyone but me.
Take your pick.
I honestly hate to gripe (especially on my first forum post not only to BB, but anywhere) and it might just be my skewed perception, so take with a grain of salt.
Anyway, thanks to everyone at BB for creating such a great site! I check in several times a day and I have BBTV set up to download to my Media Center PC. Love ya!
eX2
@edwinx2,
If you play the entire episode backwards, you can tell I'm actually singing "I AM THE WALRUS :: PAUL IS DEAD."
OK seriously, absolutely nothing of the sort was intended. The still that opens this video is simply the first frame of the episode -- we open with this performer singing a song that begins, "I want to die like they do in sci-fi."
Each of these people were uncommonly kind and generous, and unafraid of expressing themselves in ways that less kind people might ridicule. I have nothing but respect and admiration for them, and I should hope that the tone of this episode celebrates their individuality and DIY spirit.
I guess Tom Smith wasn't there... :( You should really check out his stuff - it's magnificent... :)
Hilarious! Love it...but the woman's hair is AWOL.
That's Brooke Lunderville, the Banjo Goddess of BC. (The instrument she is playing is called a banjola, a mandola with a banjo neck.) Check out her website for more demented awesomeness. Or maybe awesome dementedness, it's hard to tell.
i missed the tolkien, warcraft, and BSG references. where are they?
That woman was wearing red. Now BB should do a story on nerdcore. NC has a big feud with filk. I think it's an east coast/west coast thing. Either that or I just made it up.
@franko, we only said that it was *possible*...
;-)
I didn't actually think it was meant to disparage the filk folk, just point out that it could be read that way, but thanks for the reply!
EX2
@edwinx2, understood -- Filk is definitely a target for people who like to be mean for the sake of being mean. But yeah, that was not our intent, and I'm glad you agree. Thanks for digging BBtv, and for sharing your thoughts!
My family has been into Filk for over 15 years now. Mercedes Lackey, the writer of the Valdemar fantasy books was originally a Filker, and those books frequently have the lyrics to the filks she's written of the stories in the back. (You can find them recorded by other filkers at Firebird Arts and Music.)
Jonathan Coulton started as a Filker, but he's broken out into the big time, with a song that's the theme for G4's animated "Code Monkeys". He also did a song ("Still Alive") that's the end credits for The Orange Box's Portal game.
As someone mentioned above, Tom Smith is a famous Filker. He wasn't there because he lives in the Midwest, and doesn't come out to the West Coast often. I refer you to two Youtube versions of one of his songs, called a Boy and his Frog (about Jim Henson and Kermit). The first one has video taken from Henson's body of work, and the second is a live performance by Tom Smith.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na-xvlYMGck
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77f8wDf_Sdg
Oh, and have hankies ready, trust me, you'll need them.
Our local alternative weekly newspaper, the Boston Phoenix, had a very nice article on filk just last week.
My CD, Coffee, Computers, and Song, is available at CD Baby: http://cdbaby.com/cd/stevesavitzky
Some conventions are focused exclusively on filk:
Ohio Valley Filk Fest: (http://www.ovff.org/)
GAFilk: (http://www.gafilk.org/)
Other conventions have a strong filk track along with the usual writers, gaming, demos, and art panels:
FenCon (http://www.fencon.org) (In Dallas)
ApolloCon (http://www.apollocon.org) (In Houston)
And don't miss this year's Floating Northeast Filk Con (NEFilk):
Contata (http://www.contata.org/) June 20-22 in Parsnippany, NJ, featuring Heather Dale & Tom Smith
Here are some links to previous Filk coverage by Xeni:
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2005/09/68697
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/multimedia/2005/09/68697
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4967052
The West Coast filk conventions that I know of, going North to South and also, by coincidence, first to last, are:
http://www.conflikt.org/
http://www.consonance.org/
http://www.conchord.org/
There's also a strong filk presence at
http://baycon.org/ and
http://www.loscon.org/
Thanks for the very kind words, gang. :) I actually finally met Teresa last night at EschaCon in Philly. Fun fun fun.
I have to point out that Jonathan Coulton was not a filker and doesn't consider himself a filker. Even though that's precisely what he is. ;)
Even if you are not particularly a fan of SF, you'd have to be a pretty odd person to not enjoy getting together with a bunch of friendly crazy people at 1am to sing purely for the fun of it.
OK, so some people that sing or play aren't terribly good at it; so what? Some filkers are extremely talented, some aren't. How is that any different to any other group of people in any other field? Me, I can't sing worth a damn but I can audience with the best of them which makes me a valuable member of the filk community.
Besides, there's usually good chocolate in the filk suite at a con :)