HONK! Festival 2008
Update: The HONK! press release posted earlier was an old version. I’ve updated the post with the latest information.
Through October, I’ll be helping to coordinate the HONK! Festival in Somerville, MA. As we began to outline at last night’s meeting, the task will include local outreach, as well as online rabble-rousing. While this will mainly be channeled through the HONK! MySpace page and other HONK!-specific vehicles, I have created a dedicated space on Groundswell to begin the wider discussion about HONK! as both the event and the movement.
For those who are unfamiliar with HONK!:
HONK! is a revolutionary street spectacle of never-before-seen proportions. Joyous community bands have begun to emerge in every corner of the world from the ashes of modern-day gloom.
Twenty-four activist street bands from around the nation and beyond will convene for the third ever HONK! Festival in Davis Square on Columbus Day weekend, October 10–12, 2008.
HONK! is a huge street spectacle, completely free and open to the public. HONK! bands are joyous community bands who blend traditions of second line and klezmer, funk and bollywood, mardi gras and carnival. These bands honk their horns, beat their drums, and wave their flags in the streets to reclaim public space for the purpose of revelry. All over the world they provide the people’s soundtrack for community gardens, public school yards, puppet shows, pride parades, worker rallies, peace marches, and neighborhood fundraisers.
HONK! bands attending the festival represent nearly every region of the United States, as well as some parts of Canada and Europe. The Festival will include Titubanda, the 40-piece activist street band from Rome, Italy; the return of the 35-piece MarchFourth Marching Band from Portland, Oregon; the Brass Liberation Orchestra from San Francisco; the Hungry March Band from New York City; and Environmental Encroachment from Chicago; as well as Caka!ak Thunder (Greensboro, NC); Rude Mechanical Orchestra (Brooklyn); The Himalayas with Lesser Panda (New York City); Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band (Somerville); The Scene of the Crime Rovers (Durham, NC); The Seed and Feed Marching Abominable (Atlanta, GA); the District Circus Marching Band (Washington, D.C.); Yellow Hat Band (Seattle, WA); The Leftist Marching Band (Portsmouth, NH); What Cheer? Brigade (Providence, RI); The Bread and Puppet Circus Band (Glover, VT); Chaotic Insurrection Ensemble (Montreal); and The Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band (Somerville).
This unique gathering of brass bands will bring the music and dance of social justice to the streets of Somerville for the following events of the HONK! Festival:
1.Afternoon Symposia HONK! Symposia on “Politics and Festival” October 10, Friday, 12 noon to 6 p.m.
Tufts University
Free Admission
Description: Tufts University will host the educational and entertaining HONK! Symposia on “Politics and Festival” as part of a larger HONK! education and outreach effort of workshops and demonstrations to encourage community honking. As such, the symposium is free and open to the public and anyone interested in seeing a HONK! band in his or her own neighborhood is encouraged to attend. The symposia include:
- 12 noon – 1:30 p.m.: Workshop on The Praxis of HONK! Bands, a conversation with representatives of the HONK! bands gathered for the festival.
- 1:30 p.m. – 4 p.m.: Workshop on The Politics of HONK!, a discussion of the social and political challenges faced by HONK! bands, including self-definition, diversity and inclusion, professionalism and musicianship, group maintenance, financial sustainability, democratic organizing, and effective protest.
- 4 p.m. – 6 p.m. Keynote Panel, a discussion featuring nationally-known scholar/activists.
2.All-Day Outdoor Music Festival HONK! in Davis Square October 11, Saturday, 11:30 to 9 p.m.
Davis Square, Somerville
Free Admission
Description: HONK! will occupy Davis Square for an entire day of street band festivities, including:
- 11:30 a.m. – 12 noon: Opening Ceremonies in Seven Hills Park, with Alderman Rebekah Gewirtz and other dignitaries, a performance of the What Is Honk? cantastoria, and the ritual first honk of the festival.
- 12 noon – 9 p.m.: All of the HONK! bands will disperse to seven different locations around the square, playing two 1-hour sets each. Spectators may also encounter spontaneous parades in the square.
3.HONK! Parade Reclaim the Streets for Horns, Bikes, and Feet October 12, Sunday, 12 noon to 2 p.m.
From Davis Square to Harvard Square
Description: The “Reclaim the Streets for Horns, Bikes, and Feet!” street parade will join local community groups and performers with HONK! brass bands in a massive procession beginning at Sacco’s Bowl Haven on Day Street, proceeding down Elm Street to Beech Street, and then processing down Massachusetts Avenue to Harvard Square. The parade will include all 24 brass bands and an equal number of community organizations including Cambridge Green Streets Initiative, the Open Air Circus, Bikes Not Bombs, the Boston Derby Dames, Veterans For Peace, Livable Streets, the Puppeteers Cooperative, and Vermont’s Bread and Puppet Theater. The HONK! parade invites any community group interested in participating to contact parade organizer John Bell (parade@honkfest.org).
4.HONK! at Oktoberfest October 12, Sunday, 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.?
Harvard Square
Description: The Harvard Square Business Association’s Oktoberfest will feature four different HONK! bands in performance on different stages in Harvard Square. See harvardsquare.com for details.
5.HONK! at the Dilboy October 12, Sunday, 7 p.m. – 11 p.m.
Dilboy VFW Hall, 371 Summer Street, Somerville
Admission: $20 suggested donation
Description: The HONK! Festival will close with an open concert and jam session at the George Dilboy Hall VFW Post featuring over a dozen HONK! bands, special section jams, and mash-ups of various HONK! groups.
BACKGROUND OF THE HONK! FESTIVAL
HONK! puts forth that music and dance are not for individuals to consume in isolation, but for everyone to create and enjoy together. All year HONK! bands put themselves and their music out on the streets, all over the world, for the purpose of uniting communities in joyful resistance to modern-day fatalism and oppression. On Columbus Day weekend, the HONK! movement converges on Davis Square in Somerville to celebrate creative diversity and solidarity, to benefit from the experiences and knowledge of fellow musicians and activists, and to create a giant street spectacle for everyone to enjoy.
An ad-hoc group of musicians, teachers, organizers, artists, and community leaders have joined forces with the local “raucous, stomp your feet and belt out the choruses” street band, the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society, to bring HONK! to the Boston area on a shoestring budget. Support has also come from the Davis Square Resident and Business Initiative (DARBI), the Somerville Arts Council, and the Puffin Foundation for the Arts.
The vast majority of support for HONK! has come in small contributions and in-kind donations. For the duration of the Festival, more than 250 musicians will be housed by gracious neighbors and friends of HONK!. Many Davis Square restaurants will generously provide food for the performers for the weekend. The bands are inspired to travel great distances at great personal expense to celebrate the HONK! movement together in Davis Square.
Continuing updates and the schedule of the HONK! Festival can be found at www.honkfest.org.
Related posts:
- HONK! Music Festival – Community Meeting
- Call for Participants: HONK! 2009 Parade
- HONK! Returns in ‘09!
- HONK! Fest West 2009
- HONK! 2009 Posters and Website
More on Call for Participation, Friends & Allies, Local, Music, Performance, Resistance
Guess who’s coming to HONK!tm – the Ground Zero all volunteer Community Band – The TriBattery Pops!
FROM THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS –
Horn to be wild: Ex-punk Tom Goodkind
gets neighbors marching together
By JUDITH WILMOT
A “master of shrewd thinking” is what songwriter Chris Butler of the Waitresses, once called his friend Tom Goodkind an apt label for the punk-rocker turned community bandleader.
In the late 1970s, Goodkind’s punk band, US Ape, performed on the small, hallowed stage at CBGBs. Today, the Battery Park City resident plays larger stages out of necessity. It takes a sizable bandshell to contain the 23-member TriBattery Pops, the community band that
Goodkind founded and leads.
The idea of bringing friends together to entertain their neighbors came naturally to Goodkind, 52. A married father of two who works as a CPA,
he has deep roots in downtown Manhattan. His grandfather’s clothing store, Bert Green, was among the buildings razed to make room for the World Trade Center.
Goodkind’s rock ’n’ roll career lasted through the 1980s, when he toured internationally as a founding member of the popular neo-folk band Washington Squares. When he hit 30, he took stock of his music career,
and decided he should consider other options. “I had to work at something normal,” Goodkind says. “I remembered this teacher at NYU who said there is only one Willie Mays, but there are a lot of accountants. I decided
to get an accounting degree.”
Goodkind married his college sweetheart, Jill, and they moved to Battery Park City. He traces the next dramatic change in his life to Sept. 11, 2001.
“After 9/11, I suddenly starting talking with neighbors I had seen in the elevator for 15 years. Battery Park
City residents had to leave their apartments, and we had a real problem of knowing where to live and how to
take care of our families. All of us held on to each other through blogs, and memorized each other’s names.
… Now, we all know each other.”
He got the idea of forming a community band during a family vacation on Cape Cod.
“The town had an old fashioned gazebo band. The conductor was an older guy, and the band members
looked like firemen. They just harrumphed into the song, and played a little squeaky and out of tune.
“We sat on the lawn with family and friends all around and listened in the evening to a two-hour concert. It
was wonderful. I thought that downtown New York needed that kind of feeling around Ground Zero.”
Not long after that trip, Goodkind was helping organize a block party and needed a band. He called Lisa
Eclund-Flores, director of the nearby Church Street Music School.
She said, “Cool, just come on by and we will figure out something.’” With Eclund-Flores’ help, Goodkind not
only assembled the TriBattery Pops, but also gained rehearsal space at the school, which now lists the band
in its catalogue as one of its adult-education programs.
At the orchestra’s first rehearsal, six people showed up. “We talked for two hours, ordered pizza, and then
the band played the ?Stars and Stripes [Forever].’ It sort of sounded like the song a little bit, and it was
perfect.”
This year, the TriBattery Pops will play six performances for downtown residents. Any money they receive is donated to the Church Street Music School.
Musicians’ entire families are involved in the concerts. Goodkind says. “We have kids marching around on stilts while we play, handing out American flags.” The band has found a fitting performance space in the
Washington Market Park near Battery Park City, which has an old-fashioned gazebo.
At a Friday-night rehearsal, Goodkind bounces about the band’s rehearsal space with a rocker’s manic
energy, putting out the sheet music, which includes a march he composed. The spring in his step masks the
fact that he is not only a rock ’n’ roll survivor, but a heart-attack survivor as well.
“My pacemaker was put in this October,” he says. “I have an electrical problem with my heart, which
probably has to do with the radiation treatment for Hodgkin’s disease I had when I was 22. That’s why I went
into music instead of business. I figured I had a short lifespan.”
Goodkind waves the conductor’s baton about, and admires it with his playful smile. “I learned to conduct
from watching Leonard Bernstein’s show when I was a kid.”
Tonight’s rehearsal is scheduled for 6:30, and by seven the pizza has arrived along with three out of the 17
members expected. They happily gather chairs and music stands from the school’s various storage spots.
A tuba player, an increasingly rare type of musician in the city, comes to rehearsal, his first with the
orchestra. He is as excited to have a place to play the tuba as Goodkind is to have this essential instrument
join the community band. They begin rehearsal with the theme from “Rocky and Bullwinkle.”
The TriBattery Pops’ musicians, many of them former rockers like their bandleader, accept the limits of their current lives. “We only have nine rehearsals, and [they’re] on Friday nights, because the rest of the week we have meetings or something we have to do with the kids,” Goodkind says.
“We talk a lot and then we play. If we know the songs a little, then it’s perfect. If we get too good it ruins the sense of a community band.”
The experience of being displaced and essentially on their own after 9/11 taught downtown residents about
what it means to be a good neighbor, Goodkind says.
“I thought after 9/11 that someone would come and rescue us, but nobody has even mentioned the
displaced residents. Was 9/11 a long time ago? Yes. Do we see a hole there every day with nothing going
up? Yes. Is the community closer than it was? Sure. We have been though a bad time, and we are working
class. We can take care of ourselves, but we do need guidance, and that we didn’t get.
“Downtown has become a small, tight-knit, community that takes care of itself,” he adds. “When the Tri-
Battery Pops community band started to play, everyone pitched in to help, and it has been very cool.”
The TriBattery Pops’ concert schedule is available on the Web: http://www.tribatterypops.com.
*****