Before the music and marching starts for the Honk! festival running Oct. 9-11, Somerville City Hall opens “Looking Back at 20 Years of Honk! Festival of Activist Street Bands,” a retrospective celebrating the homegrown festival and the movement it helped inspire.
The exhibit of photographs, posters, quotes by musicians and participants and a playlist has been curated by the festival’s organizing committee to let visitors revisit favorite memories and explore how a celebration rooted in Davis Square grew into an international movement, a city spokesperson said. There are now more than 20 independent Honk! festivals and related street band gatherings around the world.
Honk! brings bands from across the country and around the world to Somerville, turning streets and public spaces into places to gather, dance and speak up, event publicist Mary Curtin said. After a start in 2006 with three local bands, eight from across the United States and one coming from Vancouver in Canada, the event’s 21st year anticipates 35 bands and video livestream participation from bands in Brazil, Chile, Italy, England, Germany and Canada.
The international bands are avoiding travel into the United States to avoid the threat of harassment and detention during Donald Trump’s presidency, but this year’s free event – still culminating in a Sunday parade from Davis Square to Oktoberfest in Harvard Square, with The Cambridge Somerville Independent as a participant – is growing and evolving in other ways:
Band Together is a pickup opportunity for musicians who aren’t members of bands in the festival to participate musically, and for musicians across bands to meet and play together.
Singing Resistance is an ongoing creative group – a Honk! band with fewer musical instruments – that welcomes local members and plans to perform during the festival.
ArtHonk!, formerly known as the Elm Street Interactive Area, closes Elm Street in Davis Square to cars from 1 to 4 p.m. Oct. 10 to put up installations and offer hands-on art activities for passersby. Local artists and activist and community groups can share ideas, concerns, images, words, creations and strategies for a better world.
The full festival schedule is here.
As part of a Community Collections series showcasing community art and creativity, the Honk! retrospective is in the City Hall second-floor minigallery with a free opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Oct. 8. The exhibit will otherwise be on display during regular business hours at Somerville City Hall, 93 Highland Ave., Central Hill.
