Skip to main content

DYC Filk Musician

December 31, 1969
Image
Rand Bellavia, internationally known filk musician

D'Youville Administrator Internationally Known "Filk" Musician

Buffalo, New York – November 14, 2012 – An esoteric and little known form of music known as "Filk" is growing in popularity and finding its way into the ears of those intrigued by new creative musical sounds.

Filking is a musical culture, genre and a community tied in with science fiction and has been around since the early 1950s and played primarily since the mid 1970s, according to Wikipedia. "Filk has been defined as folk music, usually with a science fiction or fantasy there, but this definition is not exact."

The term "filk music" started as a misspelling of folk music in an essay by Lee Jacobs titled "The Influence of Science Fiction on Modern American Filk Music." It caught on and is used today for the genre.

It is played mainly at science fiction and comic book conventions.

One of the best internationally known "filking" artists is D'Youville's Montante Family Library Director, Rand Bellavia, who just won the 2012 Pegasus Award for Excellence in Filking for his composition, "Tiberius Rising" written with long time fellow 'filker', Adam English.

When away from the D'Youville library, Rand and his writing and band mate Adam English, head up the musical group Ookla the Mok, a rock band performing and recording "filk" since 1997. Their composition and music has been used by Walt Disney Television Animation as the theme for the ABC-TV show Fillmore and their work has been used in a number of films. The group has performed throughout the U.S. and has made a number of recordings.

He and English also won a Pegasus Awards in 2004 for the Best Comic Book Song titled Arthur Curry," and the group was named "Best Performer" in 2000 and "Best Composer" in 1997. The Pegasus Awards were founded in 1984 by the Ohio Valley Filk Fest "to recognize and honor excellence in filking".

The duo has written and produced a string of compositions well known in the Filk community. The band has released many songs about more universal topics like relationships and lost love but are best known for their genre creations. The Star Wars song "Tantric Yoda" from their "Nerdvana EP" was the most requested song of 2012 on Dr. Demento's nationally syndicated radio show.

The name Ookla the Mok is named after a character from the Ruby-Spears Productions cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian created by Steve Gerber.

Rand and his band mate Adam English met at Houghton College in 1988 and shortly thereafter started performing their songs about Star Trek and Super Heroes, largely to the befuddlement of audiences in Buffalo bar scene. Some years later, they were introduced to the filk community and the rest is history as someone said.

Ookla the Mok were the International Guests of Honor at the 2009 British Filk Convention in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England and musical guests of honor at the 2007 installment of MarsCon in Bloomington, Minnesota.

The band is coming off a brief hiatus and will be playing and touring in 2013. They will be releasing their tenth album "vs. Evil" in March at Consonance in San Jose, California, where they will be the Guests of Honor.

For more information on Ookla the Mok, go to www.ooklathemok.com or www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ookla_the_Mok_(band)

Contact: Rand Bellavia at 716-829-7616

 

Related News