A wide variety of free outdoor events are being planned for Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston

HONK! 2023. The dates for this year’s music festival of activist street bands, October 6-8, are now set. The organizing has already begun in earnest, with a more complete schedule of in-person free outdoor events available soon after Labor Day weekend.

The HONK! Festival, a music fest originally conceived and presented in 2006 in Somerville, caught on immediately in the local area. Since then HONK! has been presented locally every year, in some shape or form, even during the particularly tricky era encompassing years 2020 and 2021. HONK! has carried on, not daunted by the challenges presented.

Full details on how HONK! came to be, the philosophical and pragmatic approaches behind what has now became a HONK! international movement, and what differentiates a HONK! band from other music-makers in the streets, can all be found at honkfest.org/about.

“By describing HONK! bands as activist, we are referring to bands which are socially engaged — some in direct action and outright political protest, others in community building, be it performing for social justice or community-based organizations or conducting workshops in the public schools. Further, by performing at street level, usually for free, without sound amplification and with very little distance between artist and audience, HONK! bands create a participatory spectacle to reclaim public space in ways that place them at the heart of activist politics.”

Taking a deep dive into the HONK! Wiki can also reveal the far-reaching aspects of this particular progressive musical network.

As they say, stay tuned for further details on this year’s local and longest-running HONK! Festival. For further updates, keep referring to honkfest.org.

HONK! Festival
18th annual festival of activist street bands.
October 6-8, 2023
Held in Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston neighborhoods.
Outdoors on Fri.-Sun., rain or shine.
Free and open to all.
For further information: www.honkfest.org, info@honkfest.org.