Meet the Neighbors: What’s that you say? Filk or folk? Woman writes science fiction lyrics

By Karen Middleton
karen@athensnews-courier.com

ATHENS November 26, 2007 09:52 pm

— She tells you she performs “filk” music, and you ask, “You mean folk?”
Mary Crowell says that’s actually how filk music got its name. It was a misprint of “folk” that stuck more than 50 years ago.
But although it’s been around since the 1950s, filk cannot be considered mainstream.
“About 1,500 people usually go to the conferences—from the U.S., Great Britain and Canada—people who write music and science fiction. It’s fantasy, it tells a story rather than To-40 ‘Oh, I love you, baby’ songs. It’s very lyrical.”
Crowell, who moved to Athens five years ago with her pediatrician husband, Wesley, and their young son, Simon, has won numerous awards in the genre.
She was nominated for a Pegasus Award in the category of Best Performer in 2003, and was nominated for that same award again in 2004 and 2005. Her song, “When I Grow Up” was nominated for a Pegasus Award in the category Best Comic Book Song that year. In 2006 she was nominated yet again for a Pegasus award in the category Best Writer/ Composer. Her song, “Legolas” was nominated in the category Best Torch Song.
“It started in the 1950s when people would go to science fiction conventions and someone would grab a guitar and parody lyrics,” she said. “In the 1990s you saw a lot more original music being written.”

Music in her blood

Crowell comes by her musical composition skills naturally.
“My grandmother used to play for the silent movies at the old Gem Theatre in Connecticut,” she said.
But as well as blood-borne talent, there were also countless hours of study and practice. Crowell has a B.A. in piano performance from Huntingdon College, M.M. in musicology from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, and a D.M.A. in music composition—also from the University of Alabama.
Crowell recently performed with a new musical partner, Teresa Powell, in their duo, Birds of a Feather, on the Athens square during a recent Spirit of Athens open house.
Crowell, who has taught piano and composition for 19 years, is a Florence native and a graduate of Brooks High School. Her husband, Wesley, is a Decatur native who practices with Central Pediatrics. Simon, 8, is a third grader at Julian Newman Elementary.
Crowell met her husband through mutual friends in the 1990s.
“After graduation, we were just friends and then we dated for two years and were engaged for one year, so we knew each other five years before we married,” said Crowell. “Being friends in the first is the reason we get along so well. He likes to listen. He is the first person I play for when I’ve written a song. He is a very good first audience. He’s also an excellent cook.”

Calhoun instructor

Crowell currently teaches music appreciation, class piano, and private piano lessons at Calhoun Community College. She also teaches yoga at the Wellness Center.
But it isn’t all filk for Crowell. She loves playing Rachmaninov, Gershwin and Bach.
“Poison Ivy,” her octet for flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, French horn, trumpet, and trombone was performed at the UAH Local Composers Concert in March of 2004. In August 2004, Crowell joined the band Three Weird Sisters. She also plays with Atlanta based jazz band, Play It With Moxie.
Crowell finds inspiration in diverse places to write her original compositions.
“I wrote my first murder ballad, ‘Patchwork,’ a month ago,” she said.
In “Patchwork,” a man has an unfaithful lover who leaves him for another man. However, the other man murders his lover and the first man avenges her death by killing the killer, then winds up getting blamed for both deaths and executed. His spirit becomes the incarnation of everyone in the tragic lovers’ triangle, “Both the bereaved and the murderer made. There is a monster in everyone.”
“It’s an odd one,” she said of her latest composition. “I’ve written some mainstream and I’ve written some odd. It keeps it interesting.”
Crowell recently finished recording “Courting My Muse, “her solo CD with Greg Robert. “Courting My Muse” is available through various filk dealers, Amazon.com, and CDBaby.com. It is also available at Pablos on Market.
To learn more about filk and Crowell’s compositions, visit her Web site at: www.magnusretail.com, or her MySpace page: www.myspace.com/magnusretail.

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