FILK AROUND GERMANY


Filk fandom in Germany started around 1989/1990. The more ardent fen who went to international cons to other countries brought back the virus and the infection spread quickly. Contaminants like cassettes (in most of the cases already five times or so duplicated ...) rotated and it took some time until we found the addresses of mail order companies. Oh, it was hard to come by - this filk. Thank goodness, this is less of a problem today. Just take a look at the Random Factors Online Catalogue or the MuTaBe Online Filk Shop.

Science fiction and fantasy fen are a creative and highly productive lot, in Germany as elsewhere. They had always drawn sketches and written stories. Now, they started writing songs. Indeed, quite a number of us had already written science fiction or fantasy related songs before this new word "filk" entered our vocabulary. The amount of lovely songs that had secretly gathered dust on people's shelves was astounding. So, suddenly there was filk and suddenly there was a forum. Hooray - and up she rises! It was, however, a very teeny-weenie small forum. Compared to the US and England only a very insignificant group of devotees raised their heads - and their voices - above the crowd and started singing, often being soul-wrenchingly unappreciated not only by mundanes but also by fen.

By now, filk has developed its own dynamics in Germany, Austria and Switzerland but still it is as it has been an extremely individualistic kind of pastime, very personal, a little eccentric and not easy to generalise on. Filkers can be "thieves" who "borrow" other people's tunes and write their own parodies and lyrics to them. Filkers can be performers who sing and interpret other people's filk songs, a trend particularly en vogue in the early days of filking in Germany

Filkers can be poets who write lyrics and then pass them on to other filkers who specialise in composing tunes and accompaniments. Filkers can be both lyricists and composers producing the "finished product". Filkers can also be people who like listening to filk songs and join in for choruses or go as far as grabbing the nearest kitchen tool to improve on the percussion. Filkers tolerate this without hitting other filkers on the head with afore-mentioned kitchen tools. All these filkers exist in Germany but over the past two decades, the tendency has gone from simply singing US filk songs to writing our own. Several German filk publications are available by now. Also, the standard is going up continuously - give it a try and listen to some of the later albums!

"Which language?" has always been an issue - strict adherence to grammar rules has not. The majority of songs originating in Germany is written in English to cater for a more universal audience but filk songs can be either in German or in English. Particularly in the live role playing circle a whole lot of beautiful songs in German are surfacing right now. Unbeknownst to the more SF-oriented fen an entire singing culture has developed here and is only now entering the "filk arena". (And we quickly learned that our British friends understand a lot more German than they would show ...)

To learn more about filk fandom in Germany the following routes are availabe. Subscribe to the German filk mailing list. Go to a con - the next larger con in Germany will be held in October 2014 in Wernigerode (FilkCONtinental), the next con in England is called Con27ilkin and will take place from 6th - 8th February 2015. The British filkcon gets invaded by German filkers on a regular basis, so there's a good chance to meet us. And you can contact filkers on the net - a lot of us are at home there.