jazzforthecaptain:

belleociraptor:

Can we, like, write songs for our fandoms?

Like, fanart is a thing, fanfics are a thing, but what about fantunes?

And I know we pick songs that remind us of them, but what about actually constructing, from scratch, lyrics that directly reference ships and fandoms?

Or maybe it’s already a thing?

idk

I can 100% confirm that it is a thing, it’s been around a long time, and it’s really freaking cool! The term that creators have been using since the 1970’s is “filk.” It’s called filk due to a typographical error that appeared in some scifi convention literature – it was supposed to be ‘folk music,’ but appeared as ‘filk music,’ and the word just stuck.

There’s lots and lots of Star Trek filk out there. If you’re a Star Trek fan, I recommend starting with “Banned From Argo” by Leslie Fish, and working your way out from there. Leslie actually wrote lyrics to music that appeared in Mercedes Lackey’s sci-fantasy Valdemar book series – you can see the lyrics at the back of many of the novels.

Harry Potter fandom has a form of filk, popularly known as “Wizard Rock,” or “Wrock.” There are bands that perform wrock exclusively or near-exclusively, including Tonks & The Aurors, and The Whomping Willows. At the multifandom convention GeekyCon (which began as the Harry Potter convention LeakyCon and has now split into its own thing), concerts each night featured wrock bands.

You can find filk for Torchwood, Doctor Who, Supernatural (seriously, go get Seanan McGuire’s albums, she’s a fantastic filk performer as well as an author, and I was lucky enough to see her at ChiCon 7 a few years back), and of course Star Wars, as well as Karate Kid and even Short Circuit (I love No More Kings and I hope you do too!). There’s quite a bit of Supernatural filk that’s been produced and uploaded right here on tumblr, too, including some ship-based songs, although I’m not sure where to tell you to look. Hell, I even wrote some. Actually more than that, I just don’t post it because I don’t have the equipment to produce music. Filk gets written not only about fandom, but meta-fandom. Convention events, personalities and in-jokes sometimes end up as songs.

Sometimes people write original music, sometimes people take familiar tunes and write new lyrics for them. It’s fun, and I encourage you to try if you want to! At a typical science fiction convention you might even encounter a ‘filking room,’ which is a spot where musicians can set up and jam, sing old favorites (you’d be amazed how many people know “Banned From Argo”) and share new things they’ve written. It’s a wonderful piece of fandom culture, and I love sharing it!