Note there's a related phenomenon in the Second World, called "minstrel song" in Russia. The music of the Society for Creative Anachronism has also many connections with filk and filkers. Related genres, as far as themes, are Heavy Mithril, which almost by nature qualifies at least as "found filk," Nerdcore, and Wizard Rock. The examples will therefore be divided into "Filk," where the artist considers him- or herself a filker (or dementia artist we're keeping it simple) and part of the community "Found Filk," where the artist isn't a filker, but the music qualifies and has probably been sung in circles and "Somewhere in Between," where it's not so clear.Ī more detailed history and examination of filk can be found in Tomorrow's Songs Today by Gary McGath. Demento show, which has been playing comedy and novelty music since the '70s. Other filkers, especially ones more on the "funny and pun-filled" side, prefer the term "dementia," derived from the Dr.
Partially as a result of that, there are a number of artists - such as "Weird Al" Yankovic and Jonathan Coulton - whose work is frequently sung in filk circles, but who don't consider themselves filkers. The filk culture also used to be quite aggressive in getting general participation in the singing, and it still lives on. And Sturgeon's Law still applies, after all - it's just that, unlike fanfiction, filk will often be sung aloud, which makes it harder to avoid the bad stuff when you're looking for the good. That's probably because they've been exposed to one too many bad singers - filk has a performance aspect, and mangled music can put you off of the entire field. Unfortunately, defining filk more concretely than "the music of fandom, or at least, the music of the filk community" can be tricky even in fandom circles, filk is sort of a Red-Headed Stepchild that a lot of people don't like. For more examples of filk, there's also The Virtual Filksing, which bills itself as the oldest anthology of recorded filk music on the Internet.
Check it out for some examples of particularly well-regarded filk. Filk-specific conventions do exist, the biggest being the Ohio Valley Filk Fest, which includes the annual Pegasus Awards for best filk songs. Most SF conventions nowadays have a room set aside for the filkers to sing in large bardic-style circles once the main panels end for the day - some even have concerts.
(Oh, and in case it isn't apparent already, a lot of filk songs have puns. The angsty stuff is called "ose," as in, "it's ose, ose, and more-ose." Of course, like all things, especially fandom, there can be some overlap - there are terms such as "cheeri-ose," which is both cheery and depressing "sucr-ose," sweet and sugary and depressing, and "verb-ose," long and drawn out.and depressing.