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. The genre has a niche but faithful popularity in the underground.
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 an American folk musician, author, and anarchist political activist.
Alexander James Adams is an American singer, musician and songwriter in the Celtic and world music genres who blends mythical, fantasy, and traditional themes in performances, switching between instrumental fiddle and songs accompanied by guitar, bodhrán, and fiddle-playing. Adams has also been an artist in the field of filk music and won multiple Pegasus awards.
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.
Steve Macdonald is an American filk singer/songwriter, who also appears at Renaissance Faires as "Gallamor the Bard". He served for several years as the Pegasus Award Evangelista, and was responsible for many changes in the award process that led to much greater participation among the voting base. He was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2006.
Barry and Sally Childs-Helton are a husband-and-wife duo of filk performers based in Indianapolis, IN. Barry is an accomplished guitarist and prolific songwriter, while Sally is a creative percussionist. Their eclectic repertoire ranges from clever parodies to lyrically dense "space music," mining diverse musical genres including folk, blues, rock and jazz. Both Barry and Sally have doctorate degrees in folklore from Indiana University, and the title of their album Paradox is an intentional pun. They are legacy members of The Black Book Band and current members of Wild Mercy (2002-present). Together they have been nominated 21 times for the Pegasus Award given by the Ohio Valley Filk Fest, collecting 5 trophies. In 2003, they were inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame.
Technical Difficulties was a Filk group composed of Sheila Willis, Linda Melnick and T.J. Burnside. They won The Pegasus Award in the Best Performer category at the Ohio Valley Filk Fest convention in 1989, and produced two albums on cassette, Please Stand By and Station Break.
Lee Gold is a member of California science fiction fandom and a writer and editor in the role-playing game and filk music communities.
Anne Passovoy is active in science fiction fandom and filk music, and has won two Pegasus Awards. She is married to Bob Passovoy. She has written many filk songs, including "Marcon Ballroom" and writing perhaps the most widely sung tune for Poul Anderson's poem, "Mary O'Meara."
Jordin T. Kare was a physicist and aerospace engineer who researched laser propulsion. 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 also conceived the SailBeam interstellar propulsion technique. In the science fiction fan community, he was a composer, performer and recording artist of filk music.
"Cold Iron" is a poem written by Rudyard Kipling published as the introduction to Rewards and Fairies in 1910. Not to be confused with Cold Iron.
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff is an American sci-fi and fantasy author and filk musician. As an author, she collaborated on several novels in the Batman and Star Wars franchise with Michael Reaves, and as a filk musician, she is a three-time Pegasus Award winner.
"Banned From Argo" is a filk song written and originally recorded by Leslie Fish, released in 1977 on the album Solar Sailors, and later as part of various compilations It won the 2003 Pegasus Award for Best Classic Filk Song.
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.
"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.
The Pegasus Award is the premier award for filk music and is annually hosted at the Ohio Valley Filk Fest (OVFF).
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.
Debs & Errol was a Toronto, Ontario-based comedy, musical duo consisting of Deborah Isaac and Errol Elumir (piano). They are known for performing geek music, originals and parodies, including songs about Totoro, Star Wars, Star Trek, Sherlock, and other similar themes.
