ABSTRACT
The HONK! Festival began in 2006 with simultaneous performances in parks, plazas, and one temporarily closed-off block. All of the activities – and the HONK! phenomenon in general – involve a radical approach to the festive use of public space and the actuation of cultural goals that are at the same time both idealist and eminently practical. The originary Somerville HONK! Festival is an effort to re-invent “festival” as a liminal moment in contemporary culture in which music, performance, and community are imagined and overlaid onto an urban landscape. The first HONK! Festival began with discussions among members of the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band, which had started in 2003 as a pickup group playing at anti-war demonstrations around Boston Common. The HONK! festival phenomenon is notable because brass band performance in public space has itself become unusual.
