elfinblaze

I've just finished reading an essay called Identity and Authenticity in the Filk Community, by Melissa Tatum (

meltatum), in the online journal of Transformative Works and Cultures. (Yeah, I'm still reading academic commentary for fun.)

It's an interesting look at the filk community, which I'll freely admit I know nothing about, and how it relates to the Wizard Rock community, which I know considerably more about. I've wanted to listen to filk for years but I've found it so difficult to find online, so I still haven't (with a select few exceptions). I don't know if that's because the Harry Potter is so huge it's everywhere or because Wizard Rockers have adopted MySpace en masse to spread their sound, but I've never had problems finding samples of Wizard Rock to listen to. Or maybe it's that the Wizard Rock community as a whole is younger (students, mostly) with more time to promote themselves online, not to mention tour, with less time needed for work and family responsibilities.

Anyway, the essay got me thinking: Is Wizard Rock filk? The conclusion I've come to is: buggered if I know. XD

They certainly seem similar at first glance, and I disagree with the writer in that Wizard Rock is mostly top-down, that is, artists performing for an audience. From my experience the only reason some artists perform on stage rather than a "singing circle" is that the audiences have become so huge that the performance method had to change. I can't remember where I heard it, but I remember Paul DeGeorge (of the band Harry and the Potters) saying something like: it doesn't matter if you've never played an instrument before. If Henry Jenkins has taught us anything it's that fandom is about interactive audiences, and that doesn't just go one way; we all feed each other. For most Wizard Rock bands, the genre is about other fans, it's about rocking out together, it's about everyone being (theoretically, at least) able to get involved. So I really don't think there's much of a difference between Wizard Rock and filk.

The difference is mainly nominal. Wizard Rock doesn't identify as filk. The main reason for that, at least in my experience, is that most Wizard Rockers and fans don't know what filk is.

I do agree with the writer of the essay that what's needed is crossover between filkers and other fan-music, be it Wizard Rock, Twilight Rock, Time Lord Rock, Firefly Rock, Nerdcore, Video Game Music, or whatever. Most of the latter genres have no idea of the long history of fan-music. Some of them think they came up with the idea. In the meantime, filk seems to be aging, which baffles me in the age of the internet. I'd be interested to know how many people are familiar with more than one of these communities, because for similar communities it's surprising how fragmented fandom can be. Snape44 is the only artist I've come across who is both linked to the Wizard Rock community and identifies as a filker.

Does this make sense? Does this par with anyone else's experience or am I way off base?

And I should really go back to uni and do that media degree, shouldn't I? XD

(Crossposted to my fandom journal, since that's what it was supposed to be used for, once upon a time.)