From: hrjones@socrates.berkeley.edu
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 20:48:11 -0700 (PDT)
To: owner-minstrel@rt.com
Subject: minstrel: On Filk and Ships and Sealing Wax
Message-Id: <Pine.SOL.3.96.981009204634.13100H-100000@socrates.berkeley.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-minstrel@rt.com
Precedence: bulk

Someone I've lost track of said:
> Mistress Isolde writes:
>> I don't do filk myself, but since it was being discussed, I 
>> looked in a songbook from here in An Tir, and the "filk"
>> section has 11 songs.  Of these, one is a "humorous" parody of
>> an "original" SCA themed song, and 10 are humorous lyrics
>> regarding the SCA set to totally modern  tunes.  
>> They all have "sung to the tune of" instructions.
 
> For instance:
 
> An example of the latter is "The Welsh Border Song," set to
> "The Ash Grove." ("If ever you wander out by the Welsh border/
> Come stop by and see me and all of my kin....")
 
>>All songs which are original works composed about or for the
>> SCA are found in various other sections of the book.  It would
>> appear that the An Tirian who collected these songs felt that
>> "filk" meant new words to an existing tune, whether that tune
>> was a Broadway showtune, a pop song, or an original
>> composition by a Scadian about the SCA.
 
> IMHO, in the truest sense, original music and words are not
> filk--they are, rather, an original composition.
 
What's interesting in this context is that "Welsh History 101B"
(quoted above) was never _meant_ to be sung "to the tune of"
anything -- I fully intended to write an original tune for the
lyrics, but (if I recall the circumstances correctly) I wrote it
during the year I was Bard of the Mists, suddenly needed a "new"
piece for an event, and desperately searched through my existing
repertoire for some tune the lyrics would scan to. So by the
above definition of "filk", sometimes the difference between
"filk" and "original composition" is an accident of timing.
 
I'll use this to weigh in on the "definition of filk" question
using my real-life hat as a linguist.  The ways in which the term
"filk" is used -- particularly when sf fandom, and even more
particularly when the sf-derived "filk music community" are
included in the process -- are a very classic example of a
"cluster model", and more specifically a "radial category".
 
A "cluster model" is a category when you have a collection of
prototypes or models around which the category is organized which
can't be described by the "necessary and sufficient conditions"
type of definition used in classical category theory. (Classical
category theory tends to operate on the assumption that items
either are or are not members of a category, no "maybe"s, no
fuzziness. Classical categories are defined by stating the
"necessary and sufficient" characteristics that describe
membership. I'm working more from the sort of category theory
explored at length in George Lakoff's "Women, Fire, and Dangerous
Things".) An extremely good example of a "cluster model" is that
of the word "game". It is pretty much impossible to come up with
a set of conditions that would include everything that we agree
is a "game" and exclude everything that we agree isn't a "game".
And yet, it's still a very useful word to have around.
 
A radial category occurs when the cluster of conditions that
establish the category can all overlap in the same core group of
members. The usual example given of this is the word "mother",
which clusters a number of characteristics such as genetic-
contributor, fetus-incubator, nurturer, wife-of-father, etc. all
of which _may_, but (these days) are not _necessarily_ present in
the same person. Thus a person may be considered a member
(although perhaps not a central member) of the category "mother"
while only sharing a subset of these characteristics.
 
Getting back to "filk", we have a number of characteristics or
themes present in attempts to define the category. We have issues
of "written to existing music", "humerous", "parody of existing
lyrics", "meta-commentary on the social circle producing the
work", "written by sf fan", "written in the context of sf fandom"
(it isn't clear that "SCA" could be substituted for "sf fandom"
in the general usage of the term), "written by self-identified
filk-writer", "performed in the context of a self-identified
filk-sing", and probably other conditions as well.
 
A song that fulfills _all_ these conditions (I'm thinking of
something like Mark Bernstein's "All of the Filkers are Singing")
is going to be accepted by anybody (who has any knowledge of the
category at all) as not only a category-member, but a very core
category-member.
 
A song that fulfills only one or two of these conditions is going
to get a much more tentative and variable judgement.  You'll
often hear people say, "Anything sung at a filk convention is a
filk song." (This is usually said by people feeling defensive
about some piece of non-fannish music being considered "not
really filk" and perhaps not as appropriate at a self-identified
filk-sing as other material.) But clearly, a 16th century
madrigal that gets categorized as "filk" at a filk convention
isn't at all what an SCA performer normally intends by the word.
 
When the category is moved to the SCA, any of the cluster-models
that directly involve sf fandom get stripped away. This leaves us
with a much higher emphasis on things like "parody", "written to
an existing tune", "meta-commentary", etc. in our application of
the word. This skews our understanding of the basic meaning(s).
In a self-identified filk-sing (e.g., at an sf convention)
_anything_ I have written, no matter how original, no matter how
true to historic forms, is going to get classified as "filk".
This doesn't change the nature of the song -- merely the context
in which it is being evaluated.
 
At any rate, maybe this angle will help explain why we have such
a hard time using the word "filk" in a precise technical sense.
It isn't a precise technical term -- rather, it's a functional
term that shapes its application to the function it is being
asked to serve. I've seen dictionary-style definitions of the
word "filk" (as noun, adjective, and verb) that ran on for nearly
ten pages once context and connotation were included. Don't
expect to define it in less.
 
Tangwystyl

*********************************************************
PLEASE NOTE ==> New E-mail address

WAS <hrjones@uclink.berkeley.edu>
NOW IS <hrjones@socrates.berkeley.edu>
                ^^^^^^^^
**********************************************************


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send email to majordomo@pbm.com containing
the words "unsubscribe minstrel". If you are subscribed to the digest version,
say "unsubscribe minstrel-digest". To contact a human about problems, send
mail to owner-minstrel@pbm.com