Filk Studies
This summer starts my descent into fandom, or more specifically, filkdom. As a bit of background, I’m a musicologist who has done some creation on parody song (contrafacta) in the French eighteenth century, a practice dubbed vaudeville. At the swiftly a in timely fashion, it was a common avocation to match self-written lyrics with folk songs or strikingly catchy shindig tunes by fountain-known composers (such as Lully). This diversion spanned all group classes and was an weighty piece of the the powers that be of French comic opera—opéra comique. Opéra Comique was a very unfriendly forerunner of what we now call American Vaudeville.
Spending so much time studying historical parodic practices piqued my moment in contemporary contrafacta, and as I started to google “musical feeble,” the basis “filk” caught my percipience.
Filk is a category of music in which lyrics celebrating Science Fiction and Fantasy lover background are set to existing tunes. It is the musical nation practice of creative fandom, homologous in many ways to supporter fiction and admirer art, birthed remaining half a century ago at area fiction conventions approximately the US. in the interest a clear, basic introduction to this expertise, watch M.A.S.S.F.I.L.C.’s .
So here I am, delighted to enter on a new branch of on on my never ending quest to enjoy music making and to become a more knowledgeable musicologist. I rely on that the writings that I post in the subsequent, whether directly correlated to filk or to music and musicology in panoramic, manage use in both the fan community and the musical community.
My musicological shorts desire be cross-posted at my locality and my site.
Look in the direction of my first thoughts in the next insufficient days.
Best to all,
jg
