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Thursday, October 20, 2005

MUSIC, MOVIES, TELEVISION and BOOKS: Filk Music: Odd Voices for a Digital Generation

Xeni Tech
By Xeni Jardin

Filk Music: Odd Voices for a Digital Generation

Day to Day, October 20, 2005 · What has 30 legs, five laptops, four kazoos and one Yoda? A filk singing circle. Filk is a little-known genre of folk music composed and performed by science-fiction fans, usually revolving around sci-fi and fantasy themes.

These so-called "filkers" share a lively online culture online -- and in the real world, some entertaining and slightly bizarre get-togethers.

Some songs riff on stories and characters from popular movies, TV shows, or games -- Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and Dungeons and Dragons are popular launch pads. Other tunes come from deeply weird depths of the songwriter's psyche.

Filk has been around for decades, but the genre is gaining new popularity, in part because of digital music downloads and free Internet radio. At the 19th annual Con-Chord, one of about eight yearly "filkfests" in the United States, a group gathered at a Los Angeles-area hotel to share their newest tunes.

"It's like a hootenanny on another planet," Jardin says. "Audience members sometimes cheer topically -- a song featuring bioengineered chickens is met with clucking. Another featuring pigs in space, with oinks. Another about the physics of farting is met with -- well, you get the idea."

Filk.com
Filk Archive
Filk.com's radio station on Live365.com
Posted by OlderMusicGeek at Thursday, October 20, 2005

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This is a fairly good sampling of some of the music I listen to. It's missing a few genres I like - such as cajun. I'll work on that later. But it does contain most of my favorite artists. I tried to steer away from the better known songs to give you a better idea of what kind of music the artists play, but I was limited by the songs the website - Project Playlist - had available. But if you want to get an idea of what I listen to, just hit the play or arrow button. - OlderMusicGeek

The internet station that does the best of playing my music is Last.fm. Here's my station if you're interested.

This website, OlderMusicGeek Radio on Pandora.com, does a fairly decent job of playing what I like, although they do occasionally play stuff I don't care for, but overall they're pretty good.