Filk Music - History

History

For the first few decades of the occasional science fiction convention, there had been late-night singing sessions in hotel rooms. Part of this practice may have been rooted in an older folk culture of fans. Some of the oldest filks coming out of fandom were protest songs with original words and music written by a group of New York fans called The Futurians, and were written by Fred Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth (see Damon Knight's book of the same name, which contains the words and music to several of them). With the break up of the city clubs common during the depression, filking moved to science fiction conventions, often in the form of late-night singing sessions in hotel rooms, lobbies, service passages, or wherever else the filkers could find enough room to play/sing music uninterrupted.

In the early 1950s, the term filk music started as a misspelling of folk music in an essay by Lee Jacobs, "The Influence of Science Fiction on Modern American Filk Music". 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; thus, Jacobs' 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 Kruse Anderson in Die Zeitschrift für vollständigen Unsinn (The Journal for Utter Nonsense) #774 (June 1953), for a song written by her husband Poul Anderson.

The 1950s also saw the first formal publication of filksongs, generally as lyric sheets, but occasionally complete with (often original) music. While many of those original songs faded into obscurity, some continued to be popular for decades. By the late 1970s, periodicals such as Kantele and Philk Fee-Nom-Ee-Non offered a ready outlet for filk writers.

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. In the 1970s and 1980s, filking slowly became established as an acknowledged activity at science fiction conventions. Some convention organizers allotted hotel function space late at night for filkers, or filking occurred in hallways, bars or any other place that the filkers could find. Some convention organizers in the 1980s began inviting guests specifically for their filking. 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, California; Musicon in Nashville, Tennessee; FilKONtario near Toronto, Ontario; a rotating British filkcon; the German FilkCONtinental; and others.

These efforts grew to raising funds for traveling filkers. The first was a British Filk Fund and then, in the early 1990s, several active organizers in North America created Interfilk, which is now the most active traveling filker fund. Beginning with British filker Mike Whitaker in 1992, 40 filkers were the beneficiaries of Interfilk subsidies in its first decade. OVFF began presenting the Pegasus Award annually for excellence in filk in 1984, and FilkOntario started the Filk Hall of Fame in 1995, honoring contributions to the community as well as to the music.

After years of amateur tape recordings made at filksings, a trickle of studio-produced albums and tapes began to arrive in the 1970s. These included Folk Songs for Folk Who Ain't Been Yet (featuring Leslie Fish and friends) and Children of the Future by Karen Willson.

Off Centaur Publications was one of the first formal attempts to regularly produce and promote filk albums, followed by many others since. As the costs of amateur album production dropped in the 1990s, more filkers created albums and, more recently, audio files available for downloading online.

E-mail and the internet have also fostered the networking of self-identified filkers. In the late 1980s, California filker Kay Shapero created the filk group on the Fidonet hobbyist network of electronic bulletin boards. The later creation of other electronic forums — the Usenet group rec.music.filk, a United Kingdom e-mail list FILK_UK and the German language list, an IRC channel devoted to filking, and a growing cluster of filkers blogging on LiveJournal (including a LiveJournal community), to pick a few examples — have mirrored the growing connections among other self-identified social networks (or subcultures). The availability of several hundred albums labeled filk, the proliferation of specialty filk conventions, and the continued growth of electronic means for community connections have led to an intensification of community building. A few years into the 21st century, filking as an identifiable community exists on at least three continents.

On the album Precious Friend, Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie perform "Old Time Religion", in a filk version. Most of the verses of this version were by Gordon Dickson; when Seeger finally discovered this, after the album was issued, he sent royalties on to Dickson.