Introduction
Reebee Garofalo, Erin T. Allen, and Andrew Snyder
HONK! A Street Band Renaissance of Music and Activism presents reflections on the recent, transnational movement of street bands, especially brass and percussion ensembles, that are taking over public spaces in cities from Massachusetts to Australia to Brazil. We focus on the HONK! festival network of street band festivals that began in Somerville, Massachusetts in 2006 and quickly spread to other cities in the US and around the world. We explore these bands and festivals and also use them as windows for considering related and tangential street music networks and traditions, including European brass band festivals, West African brass bands, and carnival traditions.
The contributors tackle a diverse range of themes, including circulation of repertoire, innovative musical pedagogies, strategies of musical engagement within protest, and a variety of theories of sonic and musical activisms. We have organized the book thematically, and it can be read either selectively or cover to cover. The authors write in an accessible and informed tone that should appeal to all interested readers.
Across the chapters, readers will observe a rich debate about the use of instrumental, mobile, and participatory music as a crucial element in building alternative socio-political worlds. Important to all the authors is the question of how participatory music making in the streets, especially in urban centers, might remake senses of the public sphere in an era of entrenched neoliberalism, privatization, and encroaching authoritarianism. Together, we argue that HONK! provides musical, social, and political alternatives in our contemporary world.
This book includes this companion website, which offers further media from the chapters as well as more writing and links about HONK! and other alternative brass movements. Some authors have chosen to reference links and figures that can be found on their individual pages on the website.
Link 0.1: What is HONK? Cantastoria
Reebee Garofalo, Erin T. Allen, and Andrew Snyder
HONK! A Street Band Renaissance of Music and Activism presents reflections on the recent, transnational movement of street bands, especially brass and percussion ensembles, that are taking over public spaces in cities from Massachusetts to Australia to Brazil. We focus on the HONK! festival network of street band festivals that began in Somerville, Massachusetts in 2006 and quickly spread to other cities in the US and around the world. We explore these bands and festivals and also use them as windows for considering related and tangential street music networks and traditions, including European brass band festivals, West African brass bands, and carnival traditions.
The contributors tackle a diverse range of themes, including circulation of repertoire, innovative musical pedagogies, strategies of musical engagement within protest, and a variety of theories of sonic and musical activisms. We have organized the book thematically, and it can be read either selectively or cover to cover. The authors write in an accessible and informed tone that should appeal to all interested readers.
Across the chapters, readers will observe a rich debate about the use of instrumental, mobile, and participatory music as a crucial element in building alternative socio-political worlds. Important to all the authors is the question of how participatory music making in the streets, especially in urban centers, might remake senses of the public sphere in an era of entrenched neoliberalism, privatization, and encroaching authoritarianism. Together, we argue that HONK! provides musical, social, and political alternatives in our contemporary world.
This book includes this companion website, which offers further media from the chapters as well as more writing and links about HONK! and other alternative brass movements. Some authors have chosen to reference links and figures that can be found on their individual pages on the website.
Link 0.1: What is HONK? Cantastoria
