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.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF), also simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum and hall of fame located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States, on the shore of Lake Erie. The museum documents the history of rock music and the artists, producers, engineers, and other notable figures and personnel who have influenced its development.
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.
Frank Hayes is an American musician prominent within the science fiction/fantasy genre and culture known as filk. He is also an authority on information technology and, as senior news columnist for Computerworld magazine, has contributed numerous writings on the subject for more than two decades.
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.
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.
Bill Roper is a filker and member of science fiction fandom. Roper co-founded Dodeka Records with his wife, Gretchen, received the Pegasus Award three times, and was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2000. He has chaired the Windycon science fiction convention twice as well as Whatcon and worked on Chicon IV, Chicon V, and Chicon 2000, the last as the head of the Exhibits Division.
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.
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.
Off Centaur Publications was the first "commercial" filk label. It was founded in 1980 by Teri Lee, Jordin Kare, and Catherine Cook. For a short time, Off Centaur produced high quality recordings of some of filk's best performers, and changed the course of filk music. It was dissolved in 1988. Teri Lee would go on to found Firebird Arts and Music.
Kathy Mar is an American filk singer.
Dr. James Robinson is an American filk music songwriter and performer whose songs focus on scientific themes, particularly paleontology.
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.
