Accolades
Here’s some of the positive feedback we’ve received from the HONK! and local communities. We’d love to hear about your experiences, please drop us a line. Be sure to let us know if it is ok to post your comments here. Thanks!
My experience this year was richer than ever as I had the opportunity to introduce my baby daughter Charlie to the wonderful world of activist street bands. Speaking of babies, I can’t thank the Honk! Committee enough for what it has brought into the world, and for keeping it going and growing. You are an inspiration.
– Jonathan Goldman, RMO, 2012
I just can not rave enough about Honk, the philosophy and music… Please keep HONKING- it is magnificently musical, moving, funny, cool, sexy, communal, revolutionary and inspiring! Thanks to all who make this experience and movement happen.
– Mike C, audience member, 2012
We feel honored to have taken part in such an epic and positive event. It was a thrill to perform all weekend, and share our music away from home for so many people. We met and played with a lot of musicians, and made a lot of friends.
– Lungs Face Feet, 2012
Last year’s HONK! helped our band coalesce, connect with other bands, and become a force for music in the streets in the Pioneer Valley!
Play on!
Play on!
– Fred Hooven, Expandable Brass Band, 2011
HONK! is now on a short list of amazing honored moments in my life. Lots of reasons for this…lots of gratitude.
– Kelly Bado, Expandable Brass Band, 2010
Yeah, at Honk it seems you can be whatever you want for a day, wear ladies clothes, go crazy, be yourself and be whoever you want to be. Too bad every day isn’t like that.
– A Tibetan marcher after the 2010 parade
And by the way, thanks for one of the yet-again greatest weekends of my life.
– Jonathan Goldman, trumpeter, RMO and Spanglish Fly (2010)
Congratulations once again, it’s the best event the city has all year. Just good fun.
– Doug Berman, Producer, Car Talk
I’ve witnessed a fair few music events in my fifty seven years, but 2009 Honk Fest will remain a stand-out in my memory. Three days of comaraderie with twenty five bands – four hundred musicians, just ordinary folks, no stars – but all stars, playing full-tilt, with such reckless abandon and topped off by all twenty five bands blowing the roof off the Somerville Theatre! The enthusiasm of the weekend left a tattoo on my heart – and if you want to know what it says, just stand close by when I play.
– Marc Lindy, The Carnival Band
RESOLVED, That this Board of Aldermen hereby commends the organizers of the HONK! Festival for their hard work and dedication and for making the fourth annual festival possible this coming weekend, October 9 – 11th.
– Alderman Rebekah L. Gewirtz, October 8, 2009
You guys are amazing — Thanks for making such an effort to reach out into the communities. What a contribution.
– Carrie Dancy, Executive Director, East Somerville Main Streets
HONK is not only eye-opening, it’s eye-popping, and shakes me up every year in a way that nothing else has. This is my 20th season with the Abominable. I am speaking personally, but I know I also speak for many of my bandmates in telling you that it is a joy to see and be inspired by alternate versions of street bands, to experience this kind of music as both a musician AND as an audience member, and to have the collegiate and collective warmth of so many musicians.
– Julie, trumpet, Seed and Feed Marching Abominable
It is a great pleasure to be a part of an event more wonderful and creative then my own wildest event dreams!!!
– Robin Lapidus, Director of Marketing and Events, Harvard Square Business Association
HONK really is a great festival and we hope to return again. Thanks for all your energy and work in putting this together. We all return home with new ideas about how to approach music and performance.
– Ethan Johnson, Brass Messengers
As a member of a first-time band, I wanted to say thank you for the wonderful experience of HONK! this year. I was so impressed by the organization and the fabulous hospitality you showed to the visiting bands. Ethiopian food? Beer at the Bar-B-Q? Fabulous music? Wonderful host families? You really know how to make people feel welcome and throw a good party. Thank you again!
– Whitney Neufeld-Kaiser, Orkestar Zirkonium
This email will NEVER EVER be able to demonstrate my appreciation for such an AWESOME event yesterday! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!…The kids were pumped and you helped them do something positive that will stay in their minds forever!
– Marcus Santos, Afro Brazilian Drumming composer, performer and educator
Thank you so much for the wonderful event you organized! Thank you to all the commitee and all the volunteers! Everything was really crazily well done!!! You must be so confused now after all this intensity! I’m just now getting back to normality, because few days after Honk I was still hearing music and seeing colors everywhere. All of Banda Roncati is very happy to have been in Somerville!!! And Chaotic Insurrection too!!! So fulfilling to meet other alternative marching bands!
– Elena Zanzu, Banda Roncati and Chaotic Insurrection Ensemble
Thank you! Once again I am amazed by your vision and dedication. How do you do it!!! I’m still basking in the glory of Honk (listening to the CD at work as I write this even). Thank you for providing this incredible and inspiring opportunity for us to come together to share experiences and ideas, play for hours and dance our asses off. Honk has made our band better musicians, better organizers and given us the chance build relationships with other bands across the country that will strengthen our ability to pursue the world we want to live in, or at least loudly disrupt the one we’ve got. On that note, it would be great keep collaborating with the Second Line…
– Meredith, Rude Mechanical Orchestra
I just wanted to take a moment and send you and all the organizers my deep thanks for putting together such an incredible, wonderful event. The whole weekend, the whole festival was amazingly fulfilling and inspiring for me. As a musician, an activist, and just as a person, it was amazing! I got to meet lots of incredible musicians, make music together with total strangers, bond with my own band, be part of a social/political movement — and just have lots of fun!.. I hope you can tell that I was really inspired by the festival. I never thought when I got together with BLO that I would feel connected to a nationwide movement. I didn’t think there were brothers and sisters all over the country (and the world) doing the same thing. And since I got into the band in order to inspire other people with music, it’s great to have that bounce back and feel so inspired myself. Thank you.
– Josh S, Brass Liberation Orchestra
Thank You So So Much !!!!!!! What you all did this past weekend was truly extraordinary…It was an honor to play @ Honk … We all had so much fun … Thank You Thank You Thank You !!!! What a great experience.
– Kenny W, Himalayas
We had a great great time playing all weekend, and despite warnings that it would be hard to top last year’s festival, y’all did it!! What an amazing job organizing that thing. From a participant’s perspective, totally seamless and fantastic with just the right mix of stuff. That parade must have been a pain in the butt to organize, but it was an incredible addition to last year’s plan.
– Paul M, What Cheer? Brigade
Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you for everything you did to make Honk! happen. I loved it, and so did everyone else I talked to. What an incredible weekend. I was walking around Davis Square this evening and I felt so forlorn that there wasn’t brass music drifting out of every park and alley.
– Larry S, volunteer
Hey – the honk fest last weekend rocked! It was so very cool, inspirational, and fun! Thank you. I am going to go take tuba lessons and learn to stilt walk so I can join in the fun taking over the streets!
– Anne N, Somerville resident
I want to write to you this email just to say THANKS for everything, for the festival you organized, and for the “thousand details” perfectly working while we were there. Everything has been great, i had more fun than last year, you hosted us in your houses, you gave us vans to move, you allowed us to play in that amazing parade, i can’t stop to say you thanks, also for the personal help you gave to me, for the sousaphone, for my stethoscopes, and for everything. i hope to see you again next year, or before, just in case you wanna come to Rome: you know you can come here whenever you want, as single, or with the whole band.
– Fabrizio I, Pink Puffers
I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the HONK festival this year. You did an amazing job of putting things together and making them work. I can guess (and partly saw) how much effort it involved – and imagination! The music was wonderful, and the parade was truly grand. I saw it four times, running ahead over and over so as to take in the whole thing fully each time. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was extraordinarily moving to see all those people both marching and watching from the sidewalks. I came away with renewed hope for our world, not just our little section of it.
– Taylor S, Somerville resident
I saw the parade quite by chance. It brought tears to my eyes. I told my husband (who is foreign-born) that parades and marches are a sign of our country waking up. In the U.S., we’ve been in a decade+ of slumber. It really gives me hope to see people take to the streets again.
– Jennifer D, Cambridge resident
You all made my best day in Cambridge yet. Thank you so much. I loved every moment.
– Kan Y, Cambridge resident
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Make sure you do this again and again every year; what about more than once a year. I thoroughly enjoyed the bands and the spirit of the entire event.
– Adrienne F, Somerville resident