Secret History of Filk

 POTENTIALLY LONG MESSAGE WARNING.... If the references to the "Great Conflict" are what I think they are, then perhaps a bit of filk history is in order. Be warned; I am going to be fairly general about this, and I don't have all of this firsthand myself. If others can correct me on specific points, feel free.

 <THE SECRET HISTORY OF FILK>

Once upon a time, many years ago (possibly as far back as the 1970s), there was an organization of folk in the Bay Area who decided to become filk publishers. This was Off Centaur Publications, and among the folk who belonged to that extended circle of filkdom were:   Teri Lee
  Jordin Kare
  Kathy Mar
  Cindy McQuillin

There were additional individuals involved, but these are the Names who were (a) most prominent, (b) most closely tied to the business, and (c) are still remembered and active in filkdom today.

Off Centaur was for a long time the leading (frequently only) major filk producer in existence, and published a sizable number of tapes and songbooks. These included a great many live convention tapes, the WESTERFILK collections, and tapes from Leslie Fish, Julia Ecklar, Juanita Coulson, and others.

Over time, Off Centaur's fortunes waxed and waned--sometimes due to market factors, sometimes, according to later reports, due to what we shall call creative financial management by some of those involved. [There may have been multiple instances of this latter phenomenon; the only case I ever got any neutral-observer information about did NOT involve any of the principals named above.]

Suffice to say that owing to a variety of sometimes quite dramatic conflicts, some of as much or more a personal nature than a professional/musical one, one by one Jordin, Kathy, and Cindy all ceased to be associated with what had by this time become Off Centaur, Inc., and which subsequently became Firebird Arts & Music, migrating to Oregon when Teri Lee moved here some years ago now.

I don't know the specifics of most of these, and at this very late date I am not inclined to lay blame at any individual doorstep. All four of the persons named are strong personalities of one sort or another, and it is perhaps not surprising that when that many such people were in close proximity for an extended period of time, soap opera situations ensued, and the result was that the personalities dispersed.

During the period when things were shifting most dramatically, there was indeed a good deal of tension in filkdom--you tended not to see more than one of the factions represented at the same convention, and those on the "outside" (like myself) tended to walk on eggshells a bit when the principals were within earshot.

Time and distance, especially in the last couple of years, seem to have mellowed many of these differences noticeably, and for the most part the principals seem content to leave the past in the past. Last I looked, I was on speaking terms with everyone who's ever been associated with Off Centaur/Firebird, though I still tend not to see some of them in the same places at the same times. At this point, most of the legal/artistic issues are resolved and/or moot. My sense is that most of the intense personal conflicts have pretty much run their course (with one possible exception, but as long as *that* set of principals stays clear of each other, I see no point in pursuing it).

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The departure of Off Centaur/Firebird for Oregon more or less closed out what I'd call the First Age of Filkdom. As a practical matter, what it meant was twofold:
 (a) you started to see some of the older Off Centaur material go

     out of print, as the company no longer had rights to the departed
     performers' material
 (b) new labels/companies began to arise to record and distribute tapes
     by folks no longer associated with Off Centaur/Firebird

This more or less marked the birth and rise of Wail Songs and (I think) Unlikely Publications; others would come later. [Dodeka Records, back in the Chicago area, seems to have been largely isolated from the Filk Wars here on the West Coast, although it seems to have appeared around the same time or a little later.]

It was about this time that OC/Firebird jumped with both feet into the business of doing tie-in tapes connected to Mercedes Lackey's "Heralds of Valdemar" universe. This was reliable income, and the Lackey/Fish creative pairing seemed at that time to be the company's biggest and most stable asset.

Thus the birth of the Second Age of Filkdom--when OC/Firebird turned primarily to the Lackey/Fish material (and moved out of California), it scaled back its live-convention-recording activities. You saw a bigger emphasis on studio work from them, and a gradual migration toward more professionalism in recording practices.

Meanwhile, the Bay Area folks were continuing to put out a slew of live convention tapes and running filk conventions. The Firebird talent continued to show up at some of these, but the net result was that the two groups were going in different directions.

This was the Second Age.

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The Third Age of Filk seems to have dawned with the advent of a couple of things--the evolution of the cyberspatial community, the technological changes in recording technique, and the springing-up of a growing number of local filk communities.

The live-convention album seems to be almost dead, although there's been one such CD out from Dandelion Digital. Part of the difficulty seems to be a concern with rounding up rights to record and distribute everyone's stuff now that most performers are operating what amount to their own music labels, but I frankly doubt that that's a real issue.

Electric music, including keyboards at circles and full-bore concert setups and bands, is getting more prevalent. Partly the tech is cheaper, partly it may be the garage-band mentality showing up in filkdom, partly it may be an influx of essentially pro-level talent into the community.

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However, I've wandered a long way from the root-question that sparked this whole ramble, which was roughly "Is it safe / politically correct / OK to sing so-and-so's songs at a filk circle?"

I think the answer is, in general, an unequivocal Yes. It's not a matter of nobody liking Fish songs anymore, for instance--it's that Leslie hasn't been back to the Northwest in quite awhile, and folks' mental playlists have been evolving in the meantime. [Getting her *back* to the Northwest may be tricky; her last visit to Orycon apparently spooked the concom in some fashion, possibly understandably, and as far as I can tell she's not as active in the non-filk scene as, say, Heather Alexander, who can swing through the Northwest every few months on the strength of bar and concert gigs.]

Likewise, for instance, Cindy McQuillin tunes. It's simply that we haven't heard the old ones for awhile, and my sense is that her more recent tapes have not penetrated the Northwest very deeply. (Here again, travel considerations are a problem; I don't think Cindy makes it far out of the Bay Area these days, but that's mostly for health reasons.) You can get them when PreKarious Enterprises (aka Mary Kay Kare) comes up to Orycon to run a dealers' table, but that's about it. (One thing filkdom *does* need, I suspect, is a mail-order house that carries everyone's albums; that *is* a problem left over from the Filk Wars of the First Age.)

Anyway, I've rambled more than long enough, and that should more or less answer most of the history-questions as well as the musical one.... Received on 05/31/96