Introduction: Music 25 and HONK!
From Carnevale to the Fyre Festival, from Woodstock to Coachella, from New Orleans Jazz to Tanglewood: what is it about the “music festival” that has appealed to so many impresarios and audiences across centuries and genres? "Music 25: Music Festivals" (Harvard University, Fall 2019) explored the music and sounds that transform festivals into a space outside of everyday time, while simultaneously acknowledging that festivals are always rooted in their sociocultural context. To that end, our class partnered with the HONK! Festival, a Somerville-based “brassroots revolution” featuring bands that “draw inspiration from sources as diverse as Klezmer, Balkan and Romani music, Brazilian Samba, Afrobeat and Highlife, Punk, Funk, and Hip Hop, as well as the New Orleans second line tradition.” Over the course of the semester, we talked with Ken Field and Reebee Garofalo, two of the 2019 Festival organizers; attended and documented HONK! 2019 with photos and videos; collaborated on an interactive online map of the 2019 Festival events; met with organizers and volunteers to film one-on-one oral histories; and analyzed our experiences in multimedia essays. This is what we learned.
HONK! by Music 25: Martino Boni Beadle; Iris Feldman; Valentina Gutiérrez Vanegas; Alexander Hively; Howard Johnson; Lucas Mitchell; Murimi Nyamu; Wade Pryor; Fatima Reyes; Raven Richard; Nick Sardella; Ian Saum; Max Schaffer; Drew Tucker; Luis Valencia; Matt Ybarra; Alexander Zhang; Samantha Jones (Teaching Fellow); and Dr. Caitlin Schmid (Course Head).
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