On the evil that is filk.
May. 7th, 2008 03:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdymonkeyWhat is filk? It's a misspelling of "folk" that got into an announcement at a science fiction convention and stuck. Go here if you don't believe me.
Most commonly, it is used to describe parody lyrics written to existing tunes. If you've ever heard any Weird Al Yankovic parodies, you'll know what this means.
Writing more than one set of lyrics to an existing tune is not new. If you go here, you'll see MS Harley 978 from the British Museum. In black is the Middle English paean, Sumer Is Icumen In. In red is Perspice Christicola, a hymn about the Resurrection. There. We have established that contrafait/contrafacta or whatever you want to call it is period for medieval Europe.
Another well known example in the United States is the song that is now our National Anthem. Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star Spangled Banner" after an engagement during the War of 1812. The tune is an English drinking song.
My problems with filk in the SCA are many and varied.
Firstly and foremost, when I have gone to the trouble to pitch my canvas tent and put on my linen and wool and light a fire at an SCA event, do I really want to be mentally yanked back to 8th grade by a pop tune that is inextricably linked to certain memories that have nothing to do with attempting to be medieval? No, thank you. You want to sing it in the car on the way to the event or at the diner or post-revel afterwards, OK. I have no problem with that. But please don't murder any chance of magic happening at the event itself. Here's a concept : find a period melody and write your song to that!
Secondly, there's an awful lot of Really Bad Filk being perpetrated by people who are not as clever, funny or talented as they would like to think they are. For parody to succeed, it had damn well better rhyme and scan without being forcibly shoe-horned around the tune they purport to go with, and it had damn well better be funny.
Finally, my dirty little secret. It's the path to hell. You see, I'm actually good at it. If I wanted to, I could be the Queen of Filkmonsters. I can make things you would not believe fit the tune "Men of Harlech" - and have.
I performed a filk to Patsy Cline's "I Fall To Pieces" at my second ever Kings and Queen's Bardic Champions. Everyone thought it was great - even though I had a horrible case of the shakes and was not proud of my performance. It rhymed, it scanned, it was funny - and it was the easy way out.
Most commonly, it is used to describe parody lyrics written to existing tunes. If you've ever heard any Weird Al Yankovic parodies, you'll know what this means.
Writing more than one set of lyrics to an existing tune is not new. If you go here, you'll see MS Harley 978 from the British Museum. In black is the Middle English paean, Sumer Is Icumen In. In red is Perspice Christicola, a hymn about the Resurrection. There. We have established that contrafait/contrafacta or whatever you want to call it is period for medieval Europe.
Another well known example in the United States is the song that is now our National Anthem. Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star Spangled Banner" after an engagement during the War of 1812. The tune is an English drinking song.
My problems with filk in the SCA are many and varied.
Firstly and foremost, when I have gone to the trouble to pitch my canvas tent and put on my linen and wool and light a fire at an SCA event, do I really want to be mentally yanked back to 8th grade by a pop tune that is inextricably linked to certain memories that have nothing to do with attempting to be medieval? No, thank you. You want to sing it in the car on the way to the event or at the diner or post-revel afterwards, OK. I have no problem with that. But please don't murder any chance of magic happening at the event itself. Here's a concept : find a period melody and write your song to that!
Secondly, there's an awful lot of Really Bad Filk being perpetrated by people who are not as clever, funny or talented as they would like to think they are. For parody to succeed, it had damn well better rhyme and scan without being forcibly shoe-horned around the tune they purport to go with, and it had damn well better be funny.
Finally, my dirty little secret. It's the path to hell. You see, I'm actually good at it. If I wanted to, I could be the Queen of Filkmonsters. I can make things you would not believe fit the tune "Men of Harlech" - and have.
I performed a filk to Patsy Cline's "I Fall To Pieces" at my second ever Kings and Queen's Bardic Champions. Everyone thought it was great - even though I had a horrible case of the shakes and was not proud of my performance. It rhymed, it scanned, it was funny - and it was the easy way out.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-07 10:50 pm (UTC)Calling The Anacreontic Song a "drinking song" doesn't really give it credit. It's the anthem of a libertine music and poetry society, part of the reason it's so difficult to sing (drunk or sober).
no subject
Date: 2008-05-08 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-08 03:12 am (UTC)The entry under discussion in your journal rhymes, scans and makes its point. In fact, had you not cited the source melody, I would still have been able to identify the reference, so you are ahead of a lot of practitioners of this art. What you do with it is your choice, and if writing this sort of thing gives you enjoyment, enjoy away.
I would say, however, that satire is one of those things that can come back to bite one if the subject of said satire is not a good sport about such things.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-08 01:34 am (UTC)Personally, I find modern, amplified "Celtic" music, especially if it has electronic woo-woo crap in it equally annoying.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-08 01:41 am (UTC)I once ran a nonprofit magazine, and was interviewing somebody who'd volunteered to be poetry editor. I asked him why, when we advertised we were looking for poetry submissions, 99% of everything we got was so awful. "It's easy," he said. "99% of ALL poetry is crap. Because a lot of people have no idea what poetry IS." A lot of people think rhyme and scan are all there is to it.
So much of the filk I hear is trite, sentimental, predictable, lame, boring, ponderous and twinky that I've just about decided I don't like the genre qw a whole. (Though I admit there are a few people who do know what they're doing, and I make an exception for them.)
no subject
Date: 2008-05-08 08:46 am (UTC)And seeing a conversation between, say an Elizabethan and a Viking doesn't do that anyway?
Sorry, but SCA is a Historically-based Fantasy society in my book.
It's a make-believe land populated by characters from a wide range of historial periods and locations, many of who could never have actually met or interacted.
SCA stands for Society of CREATIVE ANACHRONISM, for goodness sakes - there's no bigger clue that it's not an accurate historical experiecne by any stretch of the imagination. If you want a more accurate historical experience, join or form a group that re-enacts a specific time period and place so that everybody is singing from the same (or at least way more similar) songsheet.
I'm currently the head of a UK group that split from the SCA over 30 years ago because we were tired of being told by a committee in California that "History Happend *THIS* Way because we've decided it did," when we (they - it was before my time) could offer them surviving documentary evidence to the contrary (plus the whole changing-monarch-because-someone-different-won-a-tourney debacle). As with the SCA, we have our share of people who believe what we do is historically accurate. It isn't. Really. It isn't.
Teddy
(Hmmm... Maybe I need a "soapbox" icon... And a "rant" icon wouldnt' go amiss either)
no subject
Date: 2008-05-08 01:27 pm (UTC)Now, let it go.
FWIW, I am also a member of an English Civil War company. I do "real" re-enactment.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-08 02:02 pm (UTC)Absolutely. No arguments there.
As the content of my comment is Just My Opinion (on what happens to be a particular Soapbox Subject of mine).
There's nothing that says our opinions have to match.
Teddy
no subject
Date: 2008-05-08 08:49 am (UTC)Teddy
Finally makes the connection... Doh!
Date: 2008-05-08 09:05 am (UTC)Sorry. Connecting LJ names (or persona names etc), faces, people and costumes, and remembering where I know them from has never been a strong skill of mine.
Teddy
Re: Finally makes the connection... Doh!
Date: 2008-05-08 01:28 pm (UTC)Re: Finally makes the connection... Doh!
Date: 2008-05-08 01:59 pm (UTC)Teddy
Re: Finally makes the connection... Doh!
Date: 2008-05-08 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-11 09:32 pm (UTC)