What is furry music? Q&A with Runetooth and Bandit Raccoon

Part 1 of this series of short Q&A’s asked: what defines “furry music”? Furry dance parties are one of the strongest real life furry movements besides conventions. In a growing fandom, con stages now use millions in equipment and are the crossroads for congoers. Sound is half of the performances and videos furries love. But music isn’t exactly made by animals, it isn’t visual, and it’s an ineffable experience to even write about. “Furry” isn’t really a music genre, but it matters enough to fandom that it’s worth treating it like one for a deeper look. Start with a loose working definition: It overlaps with fandom, it’s made with furries, or it shares a general theme. Then comes the fun part of asking musicians about it. (See part 1 for the full list):

1. Are you a furry musician?
2. What is furry music?
3. Can you share a cool fact or story about your music?

EdgeDestroys (AKA Runetooth): A fandom commenter, graphic artist and musician.

1. Yeah I’m a furry musician but I don’t write music about the community, at least not yet. I have a lot of music projects though so I suppose there’s nothing stopping me from starting a new one to do it in the future.
2. As far as what furry music is, I don’t think there’s one answer that’ll do everyone’s perception of it justice, just like it’s hard to really define the community at large and make everyone happy. Furry music could be music with lyrics deliberately written about the fandom or just music written by furries, I personally write stuff to be accessible to everyone so I don’t know if I would count mine as furry music even though I am a furry. I feel like a more nuanced way of looking at this would be something like a venn diagram of music BY furries VS music FOR furries and the overlap between those. With the community at large, I think that overlap and the FOR furries parts are probably what’s perceived as “furry music” and thus tend to get more support which has always bummed me out because I’d like to see every facet get lots of support but I don’t wanna drag this out into some huge existential tedtalk.
3. As for a fun fact about my stuff uh, one of the songs that got me like, a very tiny bit of attention was a remix I did of Bonetrousle from Undertale that ended up being officially licensed through Tiny Waves and Materia Collective and released on a remix compilation album. Myself and several other artists on it got together at Anime Festival Orlando to sign it and send it to Toby Fox so Toby Fox has a CD with my signature probably somewhere in some warehouse under a mountain of millions of other things he’s been sent from fans haha. That same remix (and the rest of the album) was played at Awesome Games Done Quick last year so that was cool. If people wanna check it out I have a soundcloud and if EDM isn’t your thing I goof around with tons of other genres, ambient, metal, my newest project I’m hopefully releasing soon is easycore/chiprock so I probably have something for everyone.

Bandit Raccoon: SoCal based artist, creator and host of The Raccoon’s Den web series. 

1. Considering I am a musician in the fandom, you could say I am a furry musician. I’m fine either way.
2. I would say “furry music” could be seen as music by furries, whether or not the tracks are fandom-themed. Don’t see why it can’t be both! I see more songwriters and producers than I see singers, personally, but if I was hearing some furry slang in the lyrics, I’d definitely consider it ‘furry’ music.
3. I never learned how to read music or play an instrument, throughout my childhood I had a couple keyboards I’d experiment with, playing by ear and figuring out my way around the keys. They broke down and for a few years I had no access to any instruments, then after a couple years I was occasionally left with a babysitter who owned an upright Wurlitzer and for the few times I was there I would just do what I did before, play by ear, except now staring at a large painting in front of me and just playing something that seemed fitting with the artwork. Everything I’ve produced for myself and for others was all by ear, I’ll think of the melody I want in my head, then I’ll try to create it. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t and I end up picking up another vibe and just go with that one. It was a huge insecurity for me, after my first record I found myself collaborating with a few friends for fun, and over a few years, I ended up looking back on the milestones: four projects, nine albums, twenty-six tracks.