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Thursday, March 28, 2024

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A Honk! festival Day of Action similar to this one takes place from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Friday, starting at Downtown Crossing. (Photo: Andre Martins)

A Honk! festival Day of Action similar to this one takes place from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Friday, starting at Downtown Crossing. (Photo: Andre Martins)

This year’s Honk! street music festival include 29 bands from as far as Moscow, Paris, New Orleans and Los Alamos, and organizers are adding a “Day of Action” Friday in Boston.

The activist brass bands intend to “use their powers of music and spectacle to bring the national fight for a $15/hour minimum wage to the doorsteps of local Boston establishments still refusing to pay their workers a living wage, earn paid sick time or form a union,” organizers said.

Born in Somerville in 2006, Honk! has grown in another way as well: Although the festival has spread to Austin, Texas, Seattle, Detroit, Providence, R.I, and New York City, January will see the first Honk! Oz in Australia.

The local event begins Thursday with a 7 to 10 p.m. “pre-Honk!” in Somerville, first at Union Square Plaza, 90 Union Square, then continuing from 9 p.m. until midnight at Aeronaut Brewing, 14 Tyler St.

The Day of Action takes place from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Friday, starting at Downtown Crossing. There’s a free, public lantern-making workshop from 4 to 6 p.m. at Hodgkins-Curtin Park on Holland Street between Davis and Teele squares. That leads into the 7:30 to 9 p.m. lantern parades, sidewalk processions around Davis Square accompanied by bike lights, paper lanterns, flashlights and other forms of DIY lighting. Friday also includes a public performance from 8 p.m. to 12:45 a.m. Saturday at Johnny D’s, 17 Holland St., Davis Square, as well as a foraged meal for some 400 members of the social activist bands.

Honk! begins in earnest at 12:30 p.m. Saturday in Davis Square with the bands performing all day, outdoors, for free. A full schedule through 9 p.m. is here. (The opening ceremony is at Seven Hills Park behind the Davis Square T stop entrance on Elm Street.)

Sunday features the noon to 2 p.m. Honk! Parade that brings the bands from Davis Square to Harvard Square and its Oktoberfest celebration. (A parade route is here.) The Harvard Square Oktoberfest & All Band Concert runs from 2 to 6 p.m. all around Harvard Square, with an all band concert to be held on the Main Stage and other bands playing sets on smaller stages around Harvard Square throughout the afternoon. A full schedule is here.