HONK! and the Politics of Performance in Public Space
John Bell
This chapter looks at the roots and goals of the Somerville HONK! Festival in terms of cultural traditions and innovations connected to brass band music, activist performance, and the politics of public space. Considering recent roots of the first HONK! Festival in anti-war parades of the early 21st century, Bell looks at the history of brass bands and community performance as essentially activist, particularly in terms of the "multidimensional life-affirming" traditions of resistance (as one historian put it) inherent in African American brass band culture in New Orleans, as well as activist brass ensembles across the U.S. in the early 20th century. Bell then considers the recuperation of public space as a site of community political performance in 1960s New York City in terms of Bread and Puppet Theater, whose work was a strong influence on the Somerville HONK! Festival; as well as the example of the Situationist International, whose 1960s theories of performance in public space are echoed in the actions of the Somerville HONK! Festival. Finally, the author reviews how the theoretical goals of the Somerville HONK! Festival have met with the realities and contradictions of 21st-century community spectacle performance in the U.S. over the past fourteen years.
John Bell is Director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and an Associate Professor of Dramatic Arts, both at the University of Connecticut. He is a founding member of the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band, and the Somerville HONK! Festival organizing committee.
John Bell
This chapter looks at the roots and goals of the Somerville HONK! Festival in terms of cultural traditions and innovations connected to brass band music, activist performance, and the politics of public space. Considering recent roots of the first HONK! Festival in anti-war parades of the early 21st century, Bell looks at the history of brass bands and community performance as essentially activist, particularly in terms of the "multidimensional life-affirming" traditions of resistance (as one historian put it) inherent in African American brass band culture in New Orleans, as well as activist brass ensembles across the U.S. in the early 20th century. Bell then considers the recuperation of public space as a site of community political performance in 1960s New York City in terms of Bread and Puppet Theater, whose work was a strong influence on the Somerville HONK! Festival; as well as the example of the Situationist International, whose 1960s theories of performance in public space are echoed in the actions of the Somerville HONK! Festival. Finally, the author reviews how the theoretical goals of the Somerville HONK! Festival have met with the realities and contradictions of 21st-century community spectacle performance in the U.S. over the past fourteen years.
John Bell is Director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and an Associate Professor of Dramatic Arts, both at the University of Connecticut. He is a founding member of the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band, and the Somerville HONK! Festival organizing committee.
Link 13.1: May Day March, America (1937).
Link 13.2: A Bread and Puppet brass band featuring trumpet, euphonium, bass drum, cymbals, and snare drum can be seen in documentary footage of the 1967 March on the Pentagon, titled Washington 10/21/67.
