20th Annual HONK! Festival 2025, from Oct. 9-12 -- entire schedule now in place.

The very first ever anywhere HONK! Festival took place in Davis Square, Somerville, MA. Held during Indigenous Peoples' Day weekend, October 6-8, 2006, twelve unplugged mobile street bands -- 3 local, 8 from across the U.S., and 1 travelling from Vancouver -- all descended upon the Square. With boisterous fanfare, impossible to ignore, they gathered to celebrate their solidarity, with the strong belief that joyful music in public space can meet the challenging moments of our time.

The founders of HONK! were certainly right about that. Since 2006, HONK!s large and small have popped up throughout the world. Every October, the founding band of the HONK! phenomenon, the Good Trouble Brass Band (formerly known as the Second Line Social Aid & Pleasure Society Brass Band), continues to share its home town with kindred spirit street bands from all over the U.S. -- and usually from other countries as well. Even a HONK! United virtual front during COVID 2020 proved to be a powerful approach to keep building this ever-growing non-stop HONK! solidarity movement.

HONK! continues with its mission to cast wide a net as possible. This year, the streets will come alive with 32 (at last count) in-person bands on-site -- 11 based in Massachusetts and the rest coming in from all across the U.S. -- Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Vermont, Pittsburgh... and more!

The details for this year's HONK! are now finely tuned, and will include many of the elements that participants and attendees have come to expect for the full HONK! experience. Outdoor street level band concerts will be held throughout Somerville's Davis Square and the nearby neighborhoods on HONK! Friday and Saturday. And the vast "Reclaim the Streets for Horns, Bikes, and Feet" Parade will again travel from Davis Square to Harvard Square in Cambridge, on HONK! Sunday, arriving to participate in the 46th annual Oktoberfest.

But expect some new programming too. On HONK! Thursday, Tufts University's Department of Music will co-host a free all-day HONK! U – A Conference Celebrating 20 Years of Street Music Activism. HONK! U, which is open to all, will include presentations, panel discussions, conversations, and workshops addressing the development and expansion of HONK! as a world-wide grassroots phenomenon. Registration in advance is highly recommended. There will also be grass roots street actions taking place in different areas of Boston (specifics yet to be determined).

All HONK! details and updates are available at honkfest.org, with the specific list of this year's HONK! on-site participants now available at honkfest.org/2025-festival/bands-2025/, and the ways to volunteer and contribute can be found at honkfest.org/help/. Special thanks to the City of Somerville, Somerville Arts Council, Harvard Square Business Association, and the Davis Square and Harvard Square businesses for their continued support.