This year we have something new to do on Friday and Saturday nights: Filk-singing, a traditional fannish musical activity, usually done in groups. It's like singing around the campfire, if the campfire was in space.
Definitions of it tend to be circular: a filker is someone who sings, writes, and/or composes filk music; filk is music sung and played by a filker. But basically, what vidders do to movies, what fanfic writers do to texts and characters, filkers do to songs.
You may not know the names of all the tunes, but you're likely to know the tunes, even if the words seem peculiar. That's because the lyrics have been changed to create SF/F references. Yes, lyrics sheets will be handed out, although these days they are photocopied instead of mimeographed.
Concom member and longtime filker Michele Cox says:
The first convention I ever went to, RocKon in 1977, one of the first things I noticed was a woman carying a guitar case and a big stack of xeroxed songbooks. I followed her to a room full of people sitting on the beds, on the floor, on the (two? three?) hotel chairs that were available, on the dresser, and pretty much any place else they could find space to sit; a couple of them had instruments and were singing songs I'd never heard before, but boy, did I want to learn them.
"Worlds grow old, and suns grow cold, and death we never can doubt; time's cold wind wailing down the past reminds us that all flesh is grass, and history's lamps blow out.... but the Eagle has landed! Tell your children when -- ! Time won't grind us down to dust again!"
"There lived once two brothers, both born on Dorsai, and strong and well-favored were they; they trained in their youth for the follow the sword, the sword, the sword, and in their young manhood they soldiered away. ....//... and never a tear he let fall in his grief, though half of his soul had been slain, and lost when his brother went into the earth, the earth, the cold earth... and never he found it again.""Gordy Dickson, Gordy Dickson, Gordy Dickson is the one; science fiction is his hobby, but his main job's having fun!" (To the tune of "Oh My Darling Clementine")"Well, my uniform's green and my trappings are black and my distant ancestors tied Rome in a sack! We are not regulation, we don't even try, we're a pain in the *** of the standard Dorsai! // On a forested continent we came to fight and we found that our foe had dug in for the night; our forceleader mentioned they might not like damp, so we shanghied a river and flooded their camp!"
"I'll sing you a song about Mary O'Meara, with stars like a crown in her hair; sing of her memory ranging before me, whatever the way that I fare -- my joy is to know she is there...."
"I've lived my life, I've fought my fight, and I've drunk my share of wine! From Trieste to Cologne, was nary a knight led a merrier life than mine!"
"The careful textbooks give it, in tables at the end: the stress that shears a rivet, or makes a tie-bar bend; what traffic wrecks maccadam; what concrete should endure -- but we poor sons of Adam have no such literature -- to warn us or make sure. We only of creation -- how much luckier the bridge and rail! -- abide the twin damnation: to fail, and know we fail. Yet we, by which sole token we know we once were Gods, take shame in being broken, however great the odds -- the burden or the odds!"
I saved up for a guitar, and learned oh, at least three or maybe four chords 😉 -- I started writing songs, too -- even my dad wrote some (it was years before I figured out that some of what he wrote was more about the Korean war than it was about anything Haldeman or Dickson were writing).
These days, there's more fully original filk -- people like Alison Lonsdale writing amazing lyrics and melodies, and performing at a professional level -- but I still love the late-night gatherings of folks who just love the music, who will play the old stuff, or their own stuff, or sing along, or listen to something new like it's the best thing they've ever heard; filkers are the best audiences ever, and I'd rather listen and perform in a filksing than just about any other venue I can think of. And I've finally picked up a few more chords, too.
There'll be open filking at FOGcon in the San Jose room, probably starting around 9:30pm -- if I'm there, come say hi, and if I'm not, come anyway. Come and sing, or play, or listen -- just come and have fun, and share the music.