Urban Tapestry were guests at a convention notorious for not being filk-friendly a while ago. We would pass by people in the halls who saw our guitars and say, "Uh-oh, here come the filkers!" in mock horror. At the Friday night meet-and-greet party, I found myself talking to someone who made derogatory remarks about filking (obviously not noticing the "Filk Guest of Honour" ribbon on my badge). When I gently pointed out that I was a filker, he shook his head sympathetically and said, "I feel your pain."

Which brings up several questions:

Why does filking have such a bad reputation in fandom?

Why is it so difficult to get filk programming at some conventions?

How can we get more respect?

The main reason is because the filking community is so accepting of all types of voices and a wide range of ability. At most venues, someone singing a completely off-key, a capella dirge would be booed off the stage before finishing the first verse. Not at an open filk. While the singer may not be rewarded with a standing ovation, people will listen politely and are more able to see past an imperfect voice to well-written lyrics.

People outside of fandom are used to hearing commercially perfect voices...in live concerts, on the radio, on television. Thus when they peer into a filk room, hear a clearly "non-commercial" voice, they leave in disgust. What they fail to appreciate is that performance is only one small part of filking...they aren't aware of the special bond we filkers share, the encouragement and support (inside and outside of conventions), the friendships that are made and sustained through these gatherings.

The "everyone is welcome" core premise of the filking community may earn us the scorn of non-filkers, but I find it one of the most appealing aspects of filk, and would not want to give it up for anything.

Comments? Suggestions? Please post them below.

I suspect -- no, I know, from feedback provided by nonfilkers (but fen) -- that a reason at least the equal of performance quality for filk's reputation is its continuing reputation as consisting only of bad parody. There are lots of folks whose complete knowledge of filk is that it is "sf-oriented rewrites of other people's songs."

Clearly, that's not true of filk today (though it was MORE true in the past; it was largely true in the early 1980s, for example, when I first came into fandom). The solution is, if possible, to expose people who hold this feeling to the high-quality original music being written in filk now. It may not work -- the music may still not be to their taste -- but that's the best way I know of to get folks to acknowledge and remedy this particular misconception.

Another thing to remember: People often tease largely because their victims react. As a sometime accordionist, I'm very familiar with that effect... and I believe _VERY_ strongly that getting defensive about it just encourages them.

Yeah, there's a lot of mediocre filk. There's also a lot of mediocre costuming, and fanfic, and gaming, and reviewing, and everything else. Memebers of any one sub-fandom understand the concept of supporting and encouraging folks who are still learning... but unfortunately don't always remember to apply it to their neighbors. Sometimes simply pointing this out is enough to take the wind out of their sales.

Whatever you're doing, do it as well as you can and HAVE FUN with it. If you do that, people really don't have anything to tease you about.

"Here come the filkers"? Damn straight, and proud of it. If you think that's an epithet, you haven't heard a full restaurant's worth of fen launch into Hope Eyrie...

(Oops. c/sales/sails/ in the preceeding post. Fingers running faster than the mind again.)

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