What is Filk?
It all started, in the States, with some SF fans getting together in a corner of a convention with a song book and the odd guitar. It was just a singalong at first, but eventually someone thought to set SF-inspired words to a popular tune.
As years went by, convention singing sessions became more and more popular, and ended up even getting onto the programme. Until one day, a typo changed the word "folk" into "filk". Fandom being what it is, the name caught on, and has been used ever since.
Years later, filk now encompasses a wide range of things. It still exists in its simplest form, as SF-inspired words set to an existing tune, but there is also more and more good original music being written and performed by sf fans.
There is a growing filk community now in the UK. Some of us meet at various SF conventions held throughout the year. There is also a regular (social, non-singing) meeting once a month at a pub in Central London, and a recently established singing meet once a quarter. (Email me for current venues). In February each year we have our own Filk Convention - a whole weekend consisting of a mixture of workshops, performance and general socialising.
And, of course, many of us keep in touch via the Internet. There is a general newsgroup, rec.music.filk , which involves filkers from around the world, and I also run the filk_uk mail-list.