At Dragon*Con this year, during his Friday night concert, filkertom explained that his first Twenty-Four Hour Comics Day songwriting project was to solicit suggestions of two words and a musical style from his LiveJournal readers, and to write as many songs as possible.[1] One of the suggestions had been "Badger, Pajama," and Klezmer music, which Tom mentioned he'd had to look up, because he didn't know what it meant.[2] Later, during the open filk, adrianna_r mentioned that Heather Alexander, a Celtic-style musician/filker, is very popular in Israel.

When I got back, I took a step back and realized that a lot of filk seems to be derived from that area of the world: the Brobdingnagian Bards, Heather Alexander, and Emerald Rose, to name three, are all steeped in Irish or Celtic traditions. I guess this is largely because folk music, from which filk comes, is heavy in that tradition too, but it still caught me off guard. As I thought about it, the first lyric, "Why are there so many/Filks about Ireland" popped into my head, and I ran with it.

This song isn't seriously decrying a problem in filk, just taking a thought I had and running it to its logical extreme. There may be a few terms you don't know, or references you can't identify, so if you have any questions, just ask.

( The Klezmer Connection )

And, as a special treat (or possibly a special hell), I've recorded this one again:
http://www.stwing.org/~wmfrank/music/Klezmer.mp3

[1] My contribution, by the way, was "Space squid," and the music style was rock-and-roll.
[2] If you don't know either, call it Eastern European Jewish jazz; at least, that's how I always hear it.