Mad Trombones & Surreal Sousaphones: It’s HonkFest!

Guca was not my first trumpet festival.

For the three-and-a-half years before I moved to Istanbul, I lived in Somerville, MA. My neighborhood of Davis Square is a gloriously young and creative bit of the greater Boston area that has many wonderful things about it, but none quite as wonderful as the activist street band festival known as HonkFest.

Oh, Honk! – where it’s not strange to see marauding groups of costumed tuba players, where dancing in the streets is the default state of being. It’s a whole weekend long, and the horns honk well into the night.

HonkFest 2009

The Boston area specializes in delightful autumn festivities– Berklee Jazz Fest, RiverSing, What the Fluff (our very own Marshmellow Fluff festival)—and Honk is the best of them; an ideal autumn festival. The weather usually perches comfortably between fall crispness and summer sunshine, which is perfect for picnics and pursuing brass bands. It’s a party for all ages, a joyous open hug of a festival.

HonkFest 2010

For a full weekend, activist street bands overtake Davis Square and allow the quirky and creative character of the area to explode. (Not everyone in costume is in a band.) Only New York City has more artists per capita than Somerville, which makes it a funky, colorful place to live on an average day; during Honk, the city outdoes itself with happy, artsy energy.

HonkFest 2011

The Sunday of HonkFest weekend begins with a grand parade from Davis Square to Harvard Square in Cambridge (a distance of about 1.7 miles) where HonkFest combines with Cambridge’s Oktoberfest celebration. It’s not unusual to see unicyclists, jugglers, giant expressionist puppets, a Free Tibet group, steampunk trombonists, Occupy Boston, and riotously painted sousaphones marching along; joining the tail-end of the parade is encouraged.

HonkFest 2012

I have attended four HonkFests—2009-2012, every one since the year I moved to Somerville—but this will be my first year missing out.

HonkFest has always been a time of love and friendship for me. My first HonkFest was marked by a birthday celebration wherein my friends and I cooked and consumed 21 fresh Maine lobsters. On my second, I began a relationship that came to define my Boston experience. Every HonkFest has delivered its own flavor of wonderful, its own happy memories and silly moments.

Honk makes my heart swell, it’s my favorite weekend of the entire year and it so beautifully encapsulates the artistic and involved community that calls my old neighborhood home. I might be in Istanbul now, I might have attended a different trumpet festival this year, but Honk will always be my heartsong. If you’re in the Boston area this weekend, do me a favor—go to Davis Square and dance all weekend long.

(For the full schedule of HonkFest, check out the Honk website, http://honkfest.org/. I recommend going to Davis Square on Saturday; it’s a full day of celebration and it will be a fabulous time, I guarantee it. I wish I could go with you.)