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 been active since the early 1950s, and played primarily since the mid-1970s.
Lyle Pearce Lovett is an American singer, songwriter, actor and record producer. Active since 1980, he has recorded 13 albums and released 25 singles to date, including his highest entry, the number 10 chart hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, "Cowboy Man". Lovett has won four Grammy Awards, including Best Male Country Vocal Performance and Best Country Album. It's Not Big It's Large was released in 2007, where it debuted and peaked at number 2 on the Top Country Albums chart. A new studio album, Natural Forces, was released on October 20, 2009, by Lost Highway Records. The last studio album on his Curb Records contract, Release Me, was released in February 2012.
Tom Smith is a 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.
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.
Julia Ecklar is a John W. Campbell Award–winning 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.
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.
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.
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.
Marcon is a full-spectrum fantasy and science fiction convention based in Columbus, Ohio, and was on Easter weekend in 2013 but moved to Mother's Day weekend starting in 2014. It is now operated by the Columbus-based Science Oriented Literature, Art, and Education Foundation, a non-profit educational corporation. The name is derived from "Multiple Alternative Realities Convention".
Lee Gold is a member of California science fiction fandom and a writer and editor in the role-playing game and filk music communities.
Urban Tapestry is a three-woman band based in Toronto, Ontario that performs filk music, composed by Debbie Ridpath Ohi, Allison Durno, and Jodi Krangle. As a group, they won the 'Best Performer' Pegasus Award in both 1997 and 2004.
"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.
Michael Longcor is a folk and filk singer. His songs span a range of topics including military history, Indiana history, and humor. He has won six Pegasus Awards and has been nominated for six others. His music has appeared on Dr. Demento and on NPR's Folksong Festival, and has provided the background for a BBC documentary on Rudyard Kipling.
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff is an American sci-fi and fantasy author.
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.
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.
