From: Suze.Hammond@f56.n105.z1.therose.pdx.com (Suze Hammond)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Filk, Folk, and Fact
Date: 27 Jul 92 04:53:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: therose.712341446.F00002

Upon watching this thread crawl past for lo, these many days, I now see a 
new aspect creeping in. And it brings up the rememberance of many, many, 
*many* such discussions in the past... :-)

I think we need to recognize that there are more than just *two* styles 
being promulgated in the SCA. Besides filk and fact, we have what I would 
define as "folk" (in reference to the long tradition that spawned many of 
our "fact" songs, BTW).

First there is what I am calling, for sake of convenience and alliteration, 
"fact" songs...songs we know came from period sources. (I will allow songs 
translated into modern English here, as well.) Some of the populace believe, 
as is their right, although I think them misled, that these are the *only* 
entertainments worthy of the light of the campfires of the Society. Sobeit.

Some of these works have a serious flaw as entertainment (although no one 
faults their scholarship) in that they treat with events and conditions so 
long gone that they make no connection with the spirit, and are therfore 
rendered dull to our senses. (Not all...I never said all...:-)

Then there is filk, which needs little introduction. ;-) There is good filk 
and bad filk. Depending upon the skills of the filker. It is amusing (if 
good) and goes to the heart of our everyday foibles. It has its place, which 
to my ear is post-revel or in private camps. When I hear it performed openly 
at *events*, I have much the reaction I do to *good* dirty or ethnic jokes. 
I laugh, and then feel badly that I have so done.

What we do not seem to be straining out in this quantification is that the 
SCA is now old enough to spawn a body of *folk* songs. Songs about great SCA 
past deeds and past leaders. A whole generation has passed by now, and then 
some, and the distance is what creates folk songs. (Never forget that a 
goodly number of those "fact" songs we so cherish were the folk songs of 
their day. People in most of period did not *publish* things with an eye to 
being remembered for them...not even books. Authorship as a thing of general 
notoriety and pride came in with mass printing in late period.) Most songs 
(and I am obviously including poetry here) are the result of the moment's 
need to entertain or inform. When I hear, at an event or anywhere, a good, 
period-sounding/feeling song about Duke This and Lady That of AS II, it 
makes me warm inside, because I recognize the style as authentically 
medieval, AND I recognize the *tale* as *our* history. It pains me to see 
these efforts continually thrown into the same category as mere filk. I 
think they *do* have a place at events, and I also think that our continued 
placing of them in the same slot as filk encourages them to be sloppily 
done, without the attention to achieving a period feel that they deserve.

(As an aside, if we encouraged folk songs in the SCA, there would be more 
entertainers busily researching how period music was written, and why so, 
and our recreation would also be enhanced... I think it vastly superior 
learning the art of doing a thing, to merely learning how to copy it well.)

Moreach NicMaolain
trifid@agora.rain.com 
 
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca