The Honk! Festival of activist street bands kicked off its 21st year at Somerville City Hall on Thursday night, unveiling a commemorative art exhibit of photos and quotes from the festival’s two decade history.
The exhibit, “Looking Back at 20 Years of HONK! Festival of Activist Street Bands,” was curated by the festival’s organizing committee and filled two floors at City Hall.
In its 2006 inception, 12 bands performed in Davis Square. This year, 35 on-site bands will take to the streets of Somerville from Oct. 9-11, and on Sunday will march to Harvard Square. And Honk! Has gone international, with 20 other iterations around the globe.
Photos from the festival’s history on display at city hall featured the same ethos of the current Honk!: voter mobilization, human rights, immigration issues and climate change. Trudi Cohen, a co-founder of Honk!, said that the festival’s “heart has remained the same” throughout the years.
Immigration issues and the upcoming midterm elections will be key issues at this year’s festival, said Mary Curtin, a spokesperson for the festival and a former member of Honk!’s founding band. Curtin said she feels an increased “sense of urgency” this year.
The Good Trouble Brass Band, which founded the Honk! Festival under its former name, Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band, performed outside city hall at the opening reception.
“It feels very much like a pre-performance,” Cohen said after the performance, alluding to the preparation still underway for this weekend.
After the exhibit, many Honk! bands gave pre-performances at multiple locations across Union Square.
This year’s festival will be uniquely interactive, its organizers said. Band Together, for instance, is an open pickup band for musicians who are not a part of any Honk! band. Anyone can sign up to play with the band here.
Singing Resistance, a movement that was started out of ICE protests in Minneapolis, will also be featured at the festival. BVOCAL, one of the movement’s groups, will host an interactive singing session where anyone can join into the protest chorus.
This year’s Honk! is also the second without in-person international bands performing, a decision birthed last year out of fears of immigration and travel restrictions from the federal government. Curtin said 14 international bands will live-stream into the festival this year, a method she said worked well last year.
Longtime Honk! attendee Ron Newman said at the exhibit that the lack of international bands “takes something away from the festival.” He’s attended almost every Honk! since its inception, and said the “music” and “politics” keep him going back.
A tradition of involvement
There were others at the exhibit with a long history with the festival, including its longtime photographer, Tim Plenk. The exhibit showcased many of his photos. Plenk said it can be difficult to capture the energy of the festival and that he prefers using a long lens and observing from afar. One of his favorite things about the festival is how “everybody’s on the same level,” and bands do not perform on a stage.
Annie Silverman, who has been hosting Honk! bands in her home during the week of the festival for many years, said “sometimes it’s great, sometimes it’s horrible” about hosting. This year she’s housing Brass Solidarity, a band formed in Minneapolis, Minn. in response to the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
Even though hosting comes with its challenges, Silverman said she likes helping the community. “The ethos of Honk! is how I want the world to be,” Silverman said.
Terry Signaigo, another longtime Honk! goer and host, said she sponsors bands in her home because she enjoys contributing to the festival’s mission. Another plus side, she said, is the extensive Honk! T-shirt collection she has gained over the years.
Ruchika Madan has been attending Honk! for many years and eventually passed the tradition on to her son, who joined her in School of HONK, one of the festival’s bands, at age 10.
This year, Madan found a new way to contribute to the festival — she designed the artwork for this year’s poster and T-shirts. Madan originally designed the poster with scratchboard, a negative space medium. It features protest signs, silhouettes of brass musicians, and a woman “leading the people,” Madan said.
The official festival begins on Friday evening, with lantern parades at Hodgkins-Curtin Park and performances in Union Square later that night. Bands will then play all day in Davis Square on Saturday, followed by ArtHonk! from 1-5pm, a regular feature of the festival where anyone can make their own activist art.
The Honk! parade on Sunday will start at noon in Davis Square and end in Harvard Square where more performances will take place.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.