Archives

Hilary

Hilary

I first heard School of Honk at Porch Fest 2015 (if you watch the aerial videos of that show on YouTube, you can see me bopping around in the crowd, mentally clearing all future Sundays in my schedule), and I’ve been a fan ever since! My first musical experiences include singing “There’s a Hole in the Bucket” duets with my father at family functions, writing wordy folk songs on my mom’s guitar, and contributing a very loud cornet to middle school concert band. More recently, I was a member of the World Music Ensemble and co-president of The Lymin’ Lyons steel band at Wheaton College (MA), where I studied Creative Writing and Ethnomusicology.

The WME and Lymin’ Lyons taught me a lot about music that can be felt instead of read, and I’m now a firm believer in rote learning and using muscle memory as a way of acquiring new music skills. I love that School of Honk creates a friendly music-making environment where much of our learning comes from listening, watching, and sharing insights with the musicians beside us– it inspires a distinct form of teamwork and encouragement that makes us groove musically and interpersonally. It’s a pleasure to know there’s a community as fun, inclusive, and joy-inducing as School of Honk, and I’m thrilled to be part of the ride!

Shaunalynn

Shaunalynn

When I was a teenager, my mom and my high school band director had a tiff. My mom thought I would be a teacher, but Mr. Bastien knew I’d be a musician. “There’s music in her bones!” he said. And I did love music. I played in marching band and concert band and orchestra and all-state and clarinet choir and impromptu chamber ensembles at my church. I did finger exercises and etudes and scales and played all kinds of longer pieces. I practiced every day, but I never made music.

When I was 20 years old, playing in the MIT Wind Ensemble, I was sitting in Kresge Auditorium at one of our performances. I didn’t know anyone in the audience. I was getting my music in order to perform a piece called The Isle of Man by Percy Grainger. I think he’s most well known for Children’s March, but we were playing this more obscure piece, and we’d played it a million times during rehearsal. But, when our band director lifted up his hands and we lifted up our horns, I played that song for the first time. When it ended, I couldn’t believe what had happened. For the first time in my 10 years of playing clarinet, I’d made music. Collaborative, elated, out-of-body music. And it was then I decided to stop.

I realized in that moment, with my breath gone and the last notes of the Isle of Man still hanging in the air, that I loved music because it was transcendent. Or, better said, I loved music when it was transcendent. And, if I had to dedicate another decade of focus and practice for one more such experience, it wasn’t worth it. I left school and started sprout, and for a number of years, I thought my mom had been right. And then I discovered street music. Funky bass lines, pop covers, New Orleans rhythms, irreverent volume, dancing, yelling, joy, and spectacle. I picked the clarinet up again to play with Second Line, where I also learned sousaphone, be ear and rote. Boycott grew out of jam sessions with some other girlfriends looking to kill on their horns. I joined the organizing committee for the HONK! Festival and, after years of talking and dreaming with Kevin, joined him in starting School of HONK. Ultimately, I think it’s the unraveling of a more than decade-long feud between Mr. Bastien and my mom and an expression of my deepest musical, social, and educational values.

So, why do I come to School of HONK? I come to School of HONK for music, politics, connection, and joyful noise. I come to be free and loud, seen and heard, to have quiet moments inside myself amongst the ecstatic ritual of brass music and street revelry. I come for friends and for a better world. And I come because I find it — every, single week.