What is filk, exactly?
There have been a lot of attempts to define “filk,” and a lot of arguments have risen from those same attempts. It’s a big whirlygig of fun. To quote Nick Smith, “The simplest definition is that filk equals science fiction folk music. It is a mixture of song parodies and original music, humorous and serious, about subjects like science fiction, fantasy, computers, cats, politics, the space program, books, movies, TV shows, love, war, death…you get the idea.” Basically, filk, as a term, covers a wide variety of topics and genres. To make things just that extra little bit more confusing, anything that is written by a self-identified member of the filk community, or “filker,” is considered to be filk music. So even though many of my songs could easily pass for contemporary country or pop music, they’re filk in the eyes of the filk community, because they were written by a filker. Confused yet? Well, so are we.
