Morgan

I come for the way it sounds.

I come to dance.

I come for the chance to delight a stranger.

I come because partying week after week with the same crowd of people is something I needed in my twenties and thirties and continue to need as I move into my forties.

I come because I think alternative modes of education, and community self-education are a good thing to explore.

I come to School of HONK every week because once I was a teenager who was very serious about learning how to play the saxophone, and he’s someone I like to remember.

I come because I think we need life, joy, and a bit of subversion on our streets.

I come because I want my three year old son to have something wild in his life.

I come because I want to get to know a lot of musicians.

I come because I’ve spent time in music scenes where most of the participants weren’t formally trained, and I think it’s a great thing.

I come because I think School of HONK makes folk music and future music and we need both.

I come because the art I’ve made has always been about blurring the lines between audience and creator.

I come because it’s literally the best way I know of to meet new people, and I want a life where I meet lots of new people.

I come because I need to experience loud music and be around people but don’t like to stay up late.

I come to combat the increasingly asynchronous nature of modern life.

I come because for years my wife (Crissy, percussion) and I have dreamed of starting a daytime techno dance party. School of HONK is a big step in the right direction.

I come because I’ve never seen anything like it.

I come because it feels like home.

Lilia

I’ve dreamed of being a drummer ever since I was 17 when I was still living in the land of eternal cold, vodka, and bears. However, having no prior musical training (except for a few piano lessons) and not knowing where to begin (do they even have drum lessons in Siberia? Of course, they do, but I did not feel brave enough to try), I had to put it on a shelf and just keep on dreaming for a while – exactly 10 years. So one decade and one move across the world later, a miracle happened – I saw School of HONK perform at Somerville Porchfest 2015, and that’s how it all began. A week later, I came to take pictures of the band, two weeks later I started playing auxiliary percussion, three weeks later I was playing a snare drum! Just like that, School of HONK made my dream come true. It’s been a year and a half now and I can’t imagine living my life without it. I have learned so much about music, met so many amazing people, and made some really great friends. Thanks to the musical instruction and support I have received at School of HONK, I got comfortable enough to perform with other bands as well, such as Bread and Puppet Circus Band, JP Honk Band, and Extraordinary Rendition Band. Currently, I play with JP Honk Band which is just as warm and welcoming, and of course my Sundays are dedicated to School of HONK, come hell or high water. School of HONK is like one giant musical-dancing-performing-parading-polka-dotted family, so every Sunday I feel like coming home.

Photo credit: Kirk Israel

Veronica

I co-lead the School of HONK Dance Troupe, and one of the things I love most about SoH is that there is space for you here, even if (or maybe especially if) you’ve ever felt that dance or music “isn’t for me”. As for me, I always I loved to sing, but I didn’t know how to play an instrument or read music, so I thought I wasn’t allowed to think of myself as musical. Similarly, I always liked to move, but I “didn’t dance” (and thought I couldn’t dance) until I was about 20.

Up until then, I thought that dancing was one of those “you have it or you don’t” kind of things, and that I didn’t have it. In retrospect, all my peers who I thought “had it” took dance lessons after school or practiced on their own. Isn’t it amazing to discover that just about everything in life is actually a learnable skill rather than an innate gift?

I went to school for theater and I got to take a lot of movement classes, which made me more aware of my body, how it moves, and how to “play” it. This led me to discover that I LOVED dancing—which I think is really just a mildly intimidating word for “moving your body in relationship to a rhythm”. I spent a semester studying classical Indian dance-theater in southern India, and when I got back, I discovered international and American folk dances, and later got into things like swing/blues, tango, etc. I also work in professional theater, especially movement-based styles like puppetry, dance-theater, clowning, etc., and my idea of what counts as “dance” is pretty broad.

At this point in my life, I’m pretty darn passionate about the belief that dancing and music are for EVERYONE, and I love facilitating dance experiences at School of HONK. I love that we have a mixture of kids and adults, at all ability levels, and yet we can all come together and dance joyously, in unity with each other and with the music!

Jean

I love School of HONK! It has brought the joy of music back into my life after a long hiatus, introduced me to an amazing community of interesting, unusual, funny, crazy, supportive, and lovely people, and at times saved my sanity. I sometimes call it music therapy.

My music education began inauspiciously in the 4th grade trying to learn clarinet through group instruction. It was not a good experience. I quit after a year.

When I was 13 I picked up an old guitar that was laying around the house, learned to play it by watching a PBS TV series that taught folk guitar, and then took lessons for about a year. The most important thing I learned from my first teacher was that you could figure out the chords to a song just by listening to the record. My next teacher was a student of Stefan Grossman, a member of the 60s Greenwich Village folk scene who was also a musicologist interested in delta blues. This is how I was introduced to the finger style blues of my first guitar hero, Mississippi John Hurt.

When I was in high school I started singing in a rock and roll band. We had a ton of fun hanging out together and making music (and getting paid for it, which sure beat baby-sitting 🙂 ). We started out as a cover band but with members heading off to college, we reformed as a new group called Theatre doing original material. We were together for about one year playing some NYC gigs, the highlight of which was playing as the opening act for Sea Train at the Cafe Au GoGo in Greenwich Village. That was pretty exciting for a bunch of teenagers.

There were a few more bands that came and went but I began to have doubts about surviving the rock and roll lifestyle and instead started a career in the tech industry, got married, and had a family, all the while wondering how I would ever get music back into my life. I performed at the occasional coffee house but something was missing.

Then my friend Charlo told me about the School of HONK. I was so ready to learn a new instrument and a whole new style of music. I showed up at an early SOH session, was handed an alto sax and showed a few notes, and embouchure pointers, and although my early efforts triggered uncomfortable flashbacks to the noises that came from my 4th grade clarinet, I persevered. I love that we learn by ear, that we perform every week, and that the SOH community supports you no matter what your aspirations are or where you are on your musical journey. It’s also great to have a cadre of buddies who break into dance at the drop of a hat!

Marta

I joined School of HONK about 6 months ago because I was looking for a good way to improve my musicianship. Over the past couple years, I have been extremely serious about music and have taken classes at colleges such as Berklee and NEC. When I heard that School of HONK taught members the songs mainly by ear, I knew that this was something that would help improve my listening skills and ability to pick things up by ear. As soon as I arrived to SoH on my first day, it was clear that I would be sticking around; I immediately fell in love with the environment as well as the repertoire that we played.

Another thing that I absolutely love about School of HONK is the way that members help each other. As someone who is interested in pursuing a career in music education, I felt more than honored when I was asked to be a mentor about a month ago. Although I am still learning just like everyone else, one of the main reasons why I come to SoH now is so I can have fun helping others who are newcomers or just unfamiliar with their instrument. Everyone in this community has contributed to helping me become a stronger leader and I cannot thank them enough for that. School of HONK is truly a special group!

Susan

In 2nd grade music class I was given the choice of violin or flute. So I played a violin for 13 years and then stored it in a closet. I sang with choirs and chorus groups and went to concerts to watch others perform music. Part of me always wished I could have tried the saxophone but the band director told me I was too young for sax.

I remember the year I stumbled upon the very first HONK! festival. I danced and sang along and boy was I jealous of those musicians! They were having so much fun and entertaining so many people. That was 11 years ago.

Fast forward ten years and my husband (Matt D.) joined School of Honk with his trombone. He came home after that first week so excited that I knew I had to try this myself! It turns out it was finally time for that saxophone! With help and encouragement from everyone in the band, I started figuring out my new horn. One year later and I now play in four different groups! School of Honk has provided me a wonderful place to grow as a musician. What a gift! Where else can you join a band without knowing the first thing about your instrument?!?

Kevin

Music has always been my home. From wailing about hammers and rowboats with my mom at cribside to singing sappy seventies songs with my brothers in the car, I’ve had a tune in my head and a groove in my heart since forever. Once I picked up the trombone in 7th grade, I played along to any music, anywhere, with anyone who would have me. I played in all the school bands and city orchestras, but I also played along to my record collection, and covered pop and blues tunes with my friends in their basements. I bought a car shortly after my 16th birthday, and started playing in local hotel and party bands, until i found myself in heaven, playing college summers in a wandering clown band at a popular amusement park.

Eventually, I found myself in JUMBO, a large collection of local alternative rockers and others who played barely-recognizable versions of the most ubiquitous circus tunes (think Over The Waves, etc.), usually on old high school wind and brass instruments pulled out of the closet, or toy pianos and the like. Open to anyone who wanted to play, it was a a huge cast of characters, and showed me how a big group with a thoroughly playful attitude can be a bulwark against both musical dissonance and a fear of wrong notes. We were an instant and lasting success, with rooms full of people wondering if we were going to make it to the end of the song… song after song. Eventually, JUMBO went the way of so many other elephants, but that emancipating sense of big, diverse, playful music stuck with me.

Ten years and as many bands later, I joined the Second Line Brass Band, part of a street band revival sweeping the country. These bands have taught me that home is anywhere and everywhere street bands play. They opened my eyes and ears to the real power and possibility of music as action. Not just as a genre, or art form, or even a way of life, I’ve come to imagine brass and drum street bands as perhaps the most accessible and successful expression of collective imagination, with their own, autonomous power to effect real social change.

Street bands get the party started by putting everyone in a playful mood, and ignite the musical and social imagination in others. To play with others in this way is to nourish a deep connection with our kin while simultaneously nourishing love and respect for our own selves. By being playful, we don’t just become our most authentic selves – we glimpse ourselves through the respecting and adoring eyes of our bandmates. That awakening — mutual respect and adoration through play — is the gateway to all other progressive values — love and trust, justice and respect, peace and sustainability — and it is at the heart of our School.

School of HONK takes its name from Somerville’s annual HONK! Festival, when bands from around the world not only play for each other, but quite naturally and easily, with each other, as they share their favorite tunes. Without any of the usual trappings (conductors, sheet music, rehearsal space, sectional practices, home-study) musicians of all stripes soak up new songs, new ideas, and new inspiration from every corner. It’s the most inclusive, edifying and musical music education I’ve ever known, and it was the initial inspiration for the ear-based, mentor-led approach and the riff and groove-based repertoire of our School.

A home I built with friends, our community of players has introduced me to so many new friends and fellow travelers I never would have known otherwise, along with countless spontaneous, precious musical moments, week after week. Sunday afternoons are sacred to me now, and I cannot imagine a more welcome place to play, dance, laugh, love, listen and grow.

Carlos

I began learning to play clarinet in a high school band. Instruction however was brutal, like the military men who had taken over the country. I came of age listening to the revolutionary songs of the New Chile under Allende, and drinking the bitter wine that destitute peasants drank as they marched on dusty streets chanting old Indian songs: Music became my weapon to resist and fight back.

I sang and played in a Chilean band in exile and when that went out of fashion I took my guitar to California to organize farm workers. Illiterate peasants taught me to write and to sleep in a hammock. They also taught me a bunch of songs I took to Nicaragua where, thanks to a dubious US education, I taught college during war time.

The world is a wonderful and horrible place and when David strikes Goliath one ought to cheer: I played my guitar at a small festival in Vieques, Puerto Rico, when the US Navy got kicked out of that small island. And I played it in New Orleans after long days of helping folks rebuild, a year after Katrina. Happily, after removing Katrina mud we also paraded through N’awlins streets singing ‘We got that Fire.’

Parading in New Orleans after Katrina was an affirmation of life and illustrated for me the possibility of living to build a better world. I met my current band mates at a demonstration demanding better wages and there and then decided I’d rather carry a musical instrument than a picket sign. Music for me is an affirmation of life and of our humanity. And yes, music is still my weapon to resist and fight back.

Photo by Leonardo March

Nat

Hello! I’m Nat Hefferman, the tall skinny guy who plays baritone sax. I started playing the sax in 4th grade, because I thought it was the coolest-looking instrument in the school band, and because my dad had played sax when he was in school. I started off playing alto sax, but since I was the tallest kid in my class, the gave me bigger and bigger ones as I kept growing, which is how I ended up on the baritone. I added the bassoon when I entered high school, and continued on to college as a bassoon major at Ithaca College. I took a break from music after college for a few years when I entered the working world, but decided to get back into it once I had married and settled down. I bought a cheap second-hand bassoon, and soon found myself in demand to play in numerous community bands and orchestras. I’ve attended every HONK! in Boston since the beginning in 2006, and decide I missed playing the sax so much I bought one, and joined up with the Extraordinary Rendition Band in Providence. I’ve been coming to the School of Honk since I also enjoy playing in a Honk band closer to home.
If you get a chance, ask me about my sarrusophone – a 19th Century mutant hybrid of a bassoon, saxophone, and a paper clip.

Photo by Leonardo March.
www.mneyid.com

Patrick

Patrick Johnson is a Somerville-based filmmaker and teacher who discovered School of Honk while developing a documentary film project. Soon after, he dusted off his saxophone (in storage for sixteen years) and started playing. Inspired by the community that was forming, he also began documenting the band’s parades and practices.

As a filmmaker, Patrick likes to tell stories about artists, musicians and alternative lifestyles and sees his craft as a way to connect with his local community. His work has screened in art galleries, film festivals and has been featured in the blog BoingBoing.net. You can watch some of it here: https://vimeo.com/patrickhjohnson Patrick also teaches at Wheaton College in Norton, MA as an Assistant Professor of Filmmaking.

Photo by Tom Hazeltine.