Filk music is a musical culture, genre, and community tied to science fiction/fantasy/horror fandom and a type of fan labor. The genre has been active since the early 1950s, and played primarily since the mid-1970s.
It is used
- as a noun:
- referring to the genre (thus equivalent to “filk music”) or to a filk song
- it can also be used to refer to a gathering with the primary purpose of singing filk songs. Such a gathering held in someone’s home is called a housefilk
- “A filk of ___” refers to a filksong based on another song, using the same tune and often, but not necessarily, similar structure of plot and/or lyrics. It may be a parody of the original (not necessarily humorous), with content referring back to it, or it may be a contrafactum which reuses the music and possibly the lyrical structure of the original, but with different words. Full appreciation of a parody requires familiarity with the original, but appreciation of a contrafactum may not.
- as a verb:
- (intransitive) To participate in filk singing, not necessarily as a planned or organized event, as in “The party guests filked.”
- (transitive) To write a filk music parody of an existing song, humorous or otherwise, as in “I filked ‘Hope Eyrie‘.” When used in this way, “filk” does not imply that all song parodies are considered filk music, nor does it imply that all filk songs are parodies. Setting satirical or parody lyrics to established tunes is not exclusively the province of science fiction fandom: works of parody music such as those found in MAD Magazine or performed by Weird Al Yankovic have their own long-established traditions and history.