Filking

From SWILwiki

A filk is a song that has emerged from the SFnal/fannish tradition; it can be a parody of a mainstream or folk song, an original composition, a parody of a filk, a filk of a parody...and so on. The name came from a typo for "folk singing" on an ancient con program, and, as with so many other things in fandom, it stuck. Originally, filks dealt exclusively with SFnal and fannish concepts, but the term has umbrellaed to include songs about college, politics, non-SF TV and movies, and so on. If people at a filk sing get together to sing it, it's probably a filk.

Filking can either refer to writing a filk (as in "I filked the Numa Numa song last night") or getting together to sing filks. SWILfolk have been doing both for quite a long time.

Filking at SWIL in recent years is kind of different from filking in the greater SF/F community, in that SWILlies tend to gather in mobs and sing other people's songs, none of which (or very few of which) they've written themselves. The SWIL filkbooks are the reference work for these songs, and ought to be updated with new content occasionally.

One exception to the rule that SWILlies sing mostly other people's song is Ben Newman '01, who has become a serious filker in his own right.

Traditionally, there is a filksing at Inauguration.