Lively music poured through the streets of Somerville as 33 activist brass bands and their performers used rhythm, melody and dance to bring the community together.
From Oct. 4-6, HONK! Festival filled Davis Square and Harvard Square with performances from brass and percussion street bands from across the United States. The event was founded in Somerville in 2006 and has expanded to 22 festivals across four continents. While fostering community engagement, these activist bands use their music as a platform to advocate for their beliefs.
“It’s about celebrating the role that music plays in activism and how brass bands help, sort of support rallies, protests and marches,” said Matt Taylor, a volunteer organizer for HONK! Festival and a member of the Good Trouble Brass Band.
The HONK! Festival originated from a band called The Second Line Social Aid & Pleasure Society Brass Band, who participated in protests against the Iraq War. They created HONK! in 2006, aiming to establish a space that brings all brass bands together to celebrate the joy of music and activism. The band is now currently known as the Good Trouble Brass Band.
“The idea behind the festival is to give a place for these brass bands to be celebrated, while giving them that space to have a very joyful experience with a lot of the causes that our activists support at the same time,” Taylor said.
As the festival’s evolved, the HONK! committee collaborated with more local activists and political organizers to support the development of the society in the form of a music festival.
“It’s just really exciting to see more and more bands popping up and being out there on the streets, supporting political movements and social movements and labor human rights,” Taylor said. “Music can play a role in infusing energy into the work that social movements and political organizers do on the ground.”
In recent years, HONK! has grown, becoming a “staple for the greater Boston area,” Taylor said. The festival provides a space for activist artists to show and express themselves.
One of the festival’s featured groups, Dirty Water Brass Band, has been performing at HONK! for over a decade.
Mary Curtin, a member of Dirty Water Brass Band and HONK!’s media organizer, said HONK! is more than just a performance space — it’s a place where musicians can connect with other performers, including the theater industry and influence them to advocate for change.
“What we’re hoping is to inspire other kinds of artists to do more activist stuff,” Curtin said. “I think HONK! is the happening scene.”
Public engagement remained a huge factor in adding energy to the site, Matt Mossman, president of Blowcomotion, said.
“The audience was really receptive. They were dancing. They were having a blast,” Mossman said. “I keep running into people who saw us, saying how much they liked it and they want to come to our next set and stuff.”
Blowcomotion is a part of HONK!TX, a HONK! festival hosted in Austin, Texas. The band traveled to Somerville, their first time playing out of state, to attend HONK! at its birthplace.
“We look at being here at this festival this year as coming home, like the Mecca version of HONK!,” he said.
Mossman said he was inspired by the other brass bands’ music and enjoyed the welcoming atmosphere.
“Radical inclusiveness is kind of our activist model,” Mossman said. “We’re about community building and about giving people a chance to come together and feel that shared joy that you can only really get playing music with other people.”