What is filk music?
(And where can I find it?)
(Besides my filk music)

I'm glad you asked.

Filk Music and How To Do It

	The Dandelion Conspiracy
	What is "Filk"? by D. Glenn Arthur, Jr.
	Zander Nyrond's Filk Music and How To Do It
	Barry & Sally Childs-Helton's acceptance speeches on their induction to the Filk Hall of Fame, 2003
	The filk FAQ
	rec.music.filk, a newsgroup dedicated to filk
	An Egocentric and Convoluted History of Early "Filk" And Filking: Lee Gold's essay on the origins of the word and the activity
	dmoz's directory of filk pages
	The Science Fiction Resource Guide's Filk section
	Filk.com offers "Filk 101" as well as Filk Radio (described below).

I'm honored to have been the Interfilk guest at Consonance, the San Francisco Bay Area filk convention, March 7-9, 2003.
<great big smile>
You can read my report here.

Our housefilk in Philadelphia, June 26, 2004.

Click here for my on-line filks

Click here for a listing of filk conventions

The Interfilk Pishka A pishka (from Yiddish) is a box for charitable donations. I've been collecting donations for Interfilk, including voluntary punfines, since October, 2000, at MASSFILC meetings and at the open filking at Arisia, Boskone, and The Millennium Philcon. As of March, 2003 (after Consonance), the can has collected $129.88 (including 50¢ someone dropped into my guitar case while I was practicing on a quiet staircase at Boskone 38), plus one transit token each for New York City and Boston. All has been duly forwarded to Interfilk, including the NYC token and the cash value of the Boston one. Starting with the MASSFILC meeting of Sept. 14, 2001, and for several months after, the pishka took time off from Interfilk to work for a relief fund, collecting over $135 for it.

For filk in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, check out This isn't the official M.A.S.S.F.I.L.C. logo, but I like it. Robin Holly made this beautiful fabric version of it as part of a quilt for the Year 2000 Interfilk auction. (Big image: 243kB JPEG!)

And a couple of writing things...

• A stiry called Pachinko to Pisces, as HTML or plain ASCII.
  folk : filk :: smof : smif (hi, Septimus!) :: story : stiry
• Not a filksong or the least bit musical, but it's at least as silly as many of my filks: A Barrayar Feghoot.
  NOTE:
  1. Barrayar: If you haven't read any of Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books this will be completely lost on you.
  2. Feghoot: If you don't know what a Feghoot is... heh, heh, heh!

Other filkia...

• Some filkers' home pages
  • Leslie Fish. If anyone embodies filk, she's the one.
  • Rich Brown
  • Sherman Dorn
  • Echo's Children is the former* duo of Cat Faber and Callie Hills, of whom I am a big fan.
    * They now live in different parts of the country but are both still active in filk.
  • Bob Kanefsky (a.k.a. "Kanef")'s parody lyrics, 235 of them as of 1998.01.25, when he posted this URL. Hmm... 235 is the atomic weight of the isotope of uranium that's used in fission bombs. I suppose you could call some of Kanef's songs explosive. Certainly "burst out laughing" is often applicable.
  • Gary McGath writes songs about sf, freedom, science, living in Massachusetts, and other subjects.
  • Ben Newman
  • Joel Polowin
  • Bill & Gretchen Roper
  • Rachel Silverman, aka gingi aka gingicat
• Some other filk resources
  • Xenofilkia is a bimonthly filk magazine published by Lee Gold and consisting mostly of songs by filkers far, near, and wherever. I recommend it highly.
  • The newsgroup rec.music.filk is an excellent electronic way to meet filkers and find out about filk.
  • There is a moderately active and definitely enjoyable filk community on LiveJournal.
  • Rich Brown's filk events calendar
  • This site is a member of the Filker's Bardic Webring, through which you can visit many other filkers' sites.

    Filker's Bardic Ring [ Join Now | Ring Hub | Random | << Prev | Next >> ]

• Listening to filk on the Web
  • Prometheus Music's Virtual Filksing offers some filk in audio that you can listen to over the Web.
  • You can listen to Filk Radio on the Web! You'll get occasional popup ads while listening, but not many, and remember: TANSTAAFL.

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