filk
Part of speech: adj
noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: entertainment
lifestyle
music
Etymology: Originally "filk music" was a typo for "folk music" in a never-published essay on the influence of Science Fiction and Fantasy on folk music. Its first known 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 science-fiction author Poul Anderson.
Inflected forms:
form: filks
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: filks
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: filking
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: filked
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: filked
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: About or inspired by science fiction, fantasy, horror, science, and/or subjects of interest to fans of speculative fiction; frequently, being a song whose lyrics have been altered to refer to science fiction; parodying. (However, much filk music is original rather than parodic.)
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
examples: The blame/credit (choose one) for the first filk song is a little dubious. Like the man who tried to sit on two stools, it falls in the middle, between Poul Anderson who wrote a filk song called Barbarous Allen and Karen Anderson who egged him on and published it in Zed #774.
And the permanent exhibit area offers a filk performance on a small stage so that neophytes can sample more esoteric interests.
2006, Robert T. Balder, quoted in Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists, Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing, →ISBN, page 97,
I’m also involved in what is called filk music. This is music for and by fans of Fantasy and Science Fiction. […] Filk is nearly as big a part of my creative life as comics, and I have similarly made many friends among the creative people in that community.
Music can be very important in fan texts and activities. Fans write and perform songs at gatherings about characters from television shows, not unlike the way that folk songs are sung in folk clubs. This can be seen in the name of this fan form: filk song. According to Jenkins [in Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture], filk songs take their cue from commercial culture. They are about the characters from commercial television series, but ‘Filk turns commercial culture back into folk culture, existing as a mediator between two musical traditions. Its raw materials come from commercial culture; its logic is from folk culture’ (1992: 270).
gloss: Filk music.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: Filk turns commercial culture back into folk culture, existing as a mediator between two musical traditions. Its raw materials come from commercial culture; its logic is from folk culture.
The style of music generally used for creating filk is folk or popular music. That brings up one of the key points. Most, but not all, filk is created by "borrowing" the music of other songs and creating lyrics to fit the singer's particular circle of fandom.
2006, Robert T. Balder, quoted in Attitude 3: The New Subversive Online Cartoonists, Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing, →ISBN, page 97,
I’m also involved in what is called filk music. This is music for and by fans of Fantasy and Science Fiction. […] Filk is nearly as big a part of my creative life as comics, and I have similarly made many friends among the creative people in that community.
gloss: Filk song.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: Welcome to Harry Potter Filks, with nearly 3400 filks (including several dozen full-length musicals) by more than 250 authors from at least five continents, all on Rowling-related themes.
gloss: Filk song.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: 2006, citation in the Filk Hall of Fame
He has recently started to accompany himself on the piano, and created such wonderful songs as "The Soul" (filk of "The Ship") and "Internal Knight".
gloss: To perform filk music.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: I could have filked all night
gloss: To participate in a filk circle, including singing along.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
gloss: To write a parody of (a song).
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: 1997 (?: "July A.S. XXXI") Medieval Melodies for Filking
However, the practice of filking, of taking an existing melody and providing new, usually topical and/or satirical, lyrics, is in fact the direct counterpart of the Medieval practice of writing contrafacta.
Related words: folk music
Derived words: filkable
filksinger
Translations: