Sun. Oct. 7 

Nearly 20 bands, about 250 musicians, many locally based, but some from as far as Rome, descended on Davis Square ayesterday and played into the afternoon. It was part of the HONK!, or more acccurately, "The Return of HONK!: The Second Annual Festival of Activist Street Bands." It continues today Sunday Oct. 7 when they all begin in Davis Square and end in Harvard Square. What's it all about? We asked some of the HONK! folks.
Said Truid Cohen, drummer with the organizing band, The Second Line Social Aid & Pleasure Society Brass Band: "After last year's first-ever HONK! festival, a member of NYC's Hungry March Band said "This is the future of popular music."  I have seen that Honk bands have a broad appeal, and people of wildly diverse backgrounds, ages, sensibilities, and tastes all respond to them. We Honk because we must! We honk to wake/shake things up. We honk to warn the world that there are some serious problems out there. We honk to amplify the message of people whose struggles we support. We honk to have a good time. We honk to share something as stimulating and joyous as music with our fellow honkers. And the thing which makes the festival soar is the spirit and enthusiasm of the musicians participating.  We all share an amazement and pleasure in discovering like-minded bands, formed for both musical and social-political reasons.  Who knew that so many bands exist?  None of us."
Added Maury Martin, the SLSA & PS musical director: "'HONK!'began with several members of our brass band on the way back from a gig in Jamaica Plain. We had heard about a few other street bands such as ourselves in New York and in Rome, and thought how much fun it would be to get together with them sometime and compare notes, so to speak. We sent out queries and each band suggested another band, and before we knew it we had a dozen like-minded units from around the country wanting to come to Davis Square.  We had no idea how much money we could raise, but the bands felt convinced enough about the rightness of the idea that they signed up for the project anyway.
Rob Gregory of Redbones was instrumental in raising the funding from local Davis Square businesses and we have relied on grass roots support for this entire undertaking, putting the musicians up in houses of our neighbors, getting donated food to feed them.  It was a remarkable gathering of the tribes and the beginning of a musical movement, with communication amongst us all throughout the year about what's happening musically and politically, who's traveling to town and needs a band to play with... It's been an uplifting experience, and the building of a nationwide community of like-minded musicians has been the most gratifying part of it all."

Second Line trombonist John Bell says: "The basic idea is to bring together activist street bands from around the nation and beyond.  We had a sense that there were other bands like ours (the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band) who were playing on the street, and in demonstrations, and for community events, as opposed to trying to make a living from music per se, and it turned out to be true.  For all of us last year, the experience of meeting other folks who are doing similar (but different) things was a kind of "aha!" moment; the realization of a community of activist brass bands.
    Someone called this music "the new punk," which is probably not the case, but it represents a radical alternative to a lot of music now because it is not at all electric, it is mobile, it is cheap to do, and it connects to traditions of community music making that are fun and thought provoking.  So, the roots are in New Orleans playing, and high school marching bands, and Mexican banda groups, and French fanfare bands, Balkan brass bands, and Turkish Janissary bands.  The music seems to always have a function: to lead people to war (the Janissary bands and then the original American marching brass bands which grew to prominence in the Civil War); to celebrate in the streets; to articulate political thoughts with music, and above all to stake out and celebrate public spaces (streets, parks, plazas) as the places where people can meet and enjoy and understand each other.
   A new thing this year is the Honk Parade, whose theme is "Reclaim the Streets for Horns, Bikes, and Feet."  It seemed natural to us that, since we are bringing together about 18 brass bands used to playing on the street, it would be a good idea to do a parade. ... This too is a really old tradition, but one that is neglected or de-emphasized in a culture that constantly urges us to celebrate by purchasing goods to entertain ourselves individually, as we sit in a car or in a room listening to cds, ipods, or watching tv or diving into the internet.  The Honk Parade and the Honk Festival want to invite people to come out into the town square and see their neighbors, see what their neighbors are like, what they are thinking about, and how they dance when the music becomes so infectiously fun that you need to move. 
   So, if this music is 'radical'it is so in the sense that it is a return to the roots of music making as community effort, community identity, community celebration.  Mikhail famously called this impulse the carnivalesque; in the 60s Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem called such moments situations.  We mostly don't philosophize about this, but sense that it is a good thing to go out in the street and play music.
   The Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society started in 2003 at an anti-war march in Boston. We are Cambridge and Somerville geezers for the most part, people with regular jobs who very much enjoy making music together.  Our inspirations are New Orleans street band music, jazz, Fela, popular tunes, and the other Honk bands we've learned about and listened to.
   How much fun?  It has to do with standing in the street and being surrounded by an incredibly loud sound of brass instruments and drums, everyone moving, the music incredibly rhythmic--an environment so strong and joyous that one is carried away... It's very simple, it is very powerful, and it is free."

Davis Square, Somerville,  www.honkfest.org