Filk music is a musical culture, genre, and community tied to science fiction, fantasy, and horror fandom and a type of fan labor. The genre has existed since the early 1950s and been played primarily since the mid-1970s.
Ozric Tentacles are an English instrumental rock band, whose music incorporates elements from a diverse range of genres, including psychedelic rock, progressive rock, space rock, jazz fusion, electronic music, dub music, world music, and ambient music. Formed in Somerset in 1983, the band has released over 30 albums selling over a million copies worldwide despite never having signed to a major recording label. Throughout many line-up changes over the years, co-founder and guitarist Ed Wynne has remained the only original member of the band. The band is now credited as one of the major influences of the UK festival scene's re-emergence, becoming particularly associated with the Glastonbury Festival and their handmade series of cassette releases, mostly sold at gigs and through a fan club.
Tom Smith is an American singer-songwriter from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who got his start in the filk music community. He is a fourteen-time winner of the Pegasus Award for excellence in filking, including awards for his "A Boy and His Frog", "307 Ale", and "The Return of the King (Uh-huh)", and was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2005.
Leslie Fish is a folk musician, author, and anarchist political activist.
Ookla the Mok is a filk band fronted by Rand Bellavia and Adam English (b.1970). The two met as undergraduates while attending Houghton College in 1988, and the majority of their performances have been at science-fiction conventions or in their hometown of Buffalo, New York. The band is named after a character from the Ruby-Spears Productions cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian, created by Steve Gerber.
Julia Ecklar is an American science fiction author and a singer and writer of filk music who recorded numerous albums in the Off Centaur label in the early 1980s, including Minus Ten and Counting, Horse-Tamer's Daughter, and Genesis. Her Divine Intervention album, released in 1986, was the first filk genre release to combine the lyrical elements with orchestral and rock arrangements.
Cynthia McQuillin was a filk singer and writer as well as an author and artist. She lived in the San Francisco Bay area. Her songs touched the usual filk topics of science fiction, fantasy, and cats, but also feminism, love, Paganism, and Sizeism.
Jordin T. Kare was a physicist and aerospace engineer known for his research on laser propulsion. In particular, he was responsible for Mockingbird, a conceptual design for an extremely small reusable launch vehicle, and was involved in the Clementine lunar mapping mission. Kare was also known as developer of the Sailbeam interstellar propulsion concept and, in the science fiction fan community, as a composer, performer and recording artist of filk music.
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff is an American sci-fi and fantasy author.
"Sally Cinnamon" is a single released by the band the Stone Roses in 1987. The song was the second single released by The Stone Roses, and was released before bassist Mani joined the band. It was not included in their first studio album two years later.
Kenny Klein (1955-2020) was an American folk and country musician and a published author. He was an elder and high priest in the Blue Star tradition of Wicca. Klein was a fiddler, playing styles ranging from British folk to jazz and swing. He was convicted in April 2017 of 20 counts of possession of child pornography. He died while serving his sentence in prison.
Rachel Carns is an American musician, composer, artist and performer living in Olympia, Washington, U.S. Raised in small-town Wisconsin, she went on to study painting and drawing at Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, where she completed her B.F.A. in 1991. Carns began her career as drummer for Kicking Giant, later collaborating with several bands, including The Need. She is a celebrated graphic designer, working under the name System Lux, and plays drums and percussion with experimental performance art group Cloud Eye Control.
"March of Cambreadth" is the signature song of American singer, musician and songwriter Alexander James Adams, previously known as Heather Alexander. The song is well known in filk, Renaissance fair and Society for Creative Anachronism circles. It has been featured in novels by Mike Shepherd, John Ringo and S.M. Stirling. It has also been parodied extensively.
Three Weird Sisters is a band from Atlanta, Georgia. The group performs filk music with harp, double bass, guitar, and bodhran accompaniment. Their albums include Hair of the Frog and Rite the First Time.
Kathy Mar is an American filk singer.
S. J. Tucker is an Arkansas-born North American female singer-songwriter. Originally inspired by alternative folk rock artists like Joni Mitchell, Jeff Buckley and Ani DiFranco, Tucker – also called "Sooj" or "Skinny White Chick" – soon branched out to assume a more diverse identity. Like The Beatles – another cited influence – Tucker prefers an eclectic approach to songcraft. Since her debut album in 2004, Tucker's work has integrated elements of electronica, filk, spoken word, world music and – with the troupe Fire & Strings – fire-spinning.
"The Female of the Species" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling originally published in 1911. Its title and refrain have inspired the titles of numerous subsequent works.
Toothless George is an American punk rock musician. He is best known for his work with The Halflings, Toothless George & His One-Man Band, and Percocettes. George is a former professional skateboarder and currently lives in Tokyo, Japan.
FilKONtario is a fan-run convention in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario area dedicated to filk, the music of science fiction and fantasy fandom. Established in 1991, it is the only filk convention in Canada. In its fifth year (1995), the convention initiated the Filk Hall of Fame, which continues to recognize those who have made significant contributions to filk music and the filk community, worldwide. This international awards program is administered through FilKONtario, with an international jury.
Talis Kimberley is an English folk singer-songwriter, activist, and political figure based in Wiltshire, England. Her songs are narrative in nature and feature a mixture of mythology, green issues and everyday life approached from unexpected angles, among other things. She performs as a solo artist or with her floating band, and is managed by Marchwood Media. She has been an active contributor to the Occupy movement, and in 2015 was the parliamentary candidate for the Green Party for the South Swindon constituency, winning 1,757 votes.
