Dozens of street bands turned out to play at the 18th annual HONK! Festival the first weekend of October, filling the streets of Boston with handmade art, joyous celebrations and the sound of brass music. The bands shared the stage with cloudy skies and heavy downpours throughout the festival but still performed across the city without missing a beat.
The festival began Thursday, Oct. 5, with a Brass Band Blowout from 7 p.m. to midnight in Union Square. After this five-hour weekday warmup, the festival kicked off, bringing its impromptu dance parties, sequined costumes and radically exuberant energy all the way into the next week, closing off the streets from Davis Square to Harvard Square until Sunday.
For nearly two decades, the HONK! Festival has served as a hub for street ensembles and protest musician collectives, who engage in activism as diverse as reclaiming public space with music and festivities to playing at local protests and drowning out reactionary groups. The HONK! Festival brings together street bands from Vermont, Colorado, Georgia and many other states to share stories, speeches and music from across history with each other and the citizens of Boston.
On Saturday, the festival occupied Seven Hills Park by Davis Station and the adjacent intersection. Each band had a street to itself, and bebop, jazz, swingtime, pop covers and protest music — all played by full brass ensembles — echoed off the walls of grocery stores and organic restaurants.
No more than an hour into the festivities, the low-hanging gray clouds that had been threatening rain the whole day burst at the seams. The rain washed away the fringes of the crowd and sent bystanders who had paused to listen to the bands running for cover, while the core of the festival stayed behind. Children ran laughing and screaming through the raindrops while musicians shared umbrellas and shook water out of the various nooks and crannies of their instruments.
Dozens of festival-goers took shelter in the shade of Davis Station while the bands outside stood their ground and played on. Trombones and trumpets wheezed and spat, drummers kicked up a fine mist as they played and rusty tubas gargled melodies. Through it all, the raindrops leapt and danced in the street.
The HONK! Festival ended with a fittingly extravagant Sunday parade: 18 streets were closed as almost 60 street bands and countless performing artists marched from Davis Square to Harvard Square. An elaborate procession of dancers in every style promenaded alongside companies of puppeteers, swaying stilt-walkers and synchronized brass bands through the heart of Boston under a warm blue sky. When the festival ended, its musicians would scatter across the U.S. and bring their unique brand of musical activism back to their home cities, but for now, as they were cheered down Boston’s streets by hundreds of revelers, 57 bands all played as one.
