Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2020: Week 49
Filk is a musical culture, genre, and community tied to science fiction/fantasy fandom. The genre has been active since the early 1950s, and played primarily since the mid-1970s. An early mention of filk songs can be seen in the zine Day Star.
It's commonly described casually as "science-fiction folk music" -- and in fact, the word "filk" comes from a typo for "folk" in a 1950s essay -- but that falls short of the full range of music that's considered filk. The exact definition is controversial; like the definition of "fanfiction," fans do not agree on the boundaries of the genre.
It has been defined as the folk music of the science fiction community, and to a lesser extent, of fans in general. The Interfilk website has a good set of links to a variety of definitions.
Some definitions focus on the location of the activity ("filk is what happens in a filk circle"), and some focus on the content of the lyrics ("Filk includes songs about every science fiction or fantasy subject you could imagine: outer space (both real and fictional), books, movies, TV shows, dragons, magic, unicorns, vampires, and aliens of every sort. It also includes songs about things of interest to the Science Fiction and Fantasy community (usually referred to as 'fandom') and strongly resembles contemporary folk music").