R. Garofalo, E. T. Allen, A. Snyder, "Honk!: A Street Band Renaissance of Music and Activism" (Routledge, 2019)

Summary

HONK! A Street Band Renaissance of Music and Activism (Routledge, 2020), edited by Reebee Garofalo, Erin T. Allen, and Andrew Snyder, explores a fast-growing and transnational movement of street bands—particularly brass and percussion ensembles—and examines how this exciting phenomenon mobilizes communities to reimagine public spaces, protest injustice, and assert their activism. Through the joy of participatory music making, HONK! bands foster active musical engagement in street protests while encouraging grassroots organization, representing a manifestation of cultural activity that exists at the intersections of community, activism, and music. This collection of twenty essays considers the parallels between the diversity of these movements and the diversity of the musical repertoire these bands play and share. 

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Reebee Garofalo is a member of the Organizing Committee for the Somerville HONK! Festival and a longtime scholar of popular music studies. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Erin T. Allen is a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology at Ohio State University with a dissertation focused on the HONK! community in the United States. She is an ethnomusicologist who plays trumpet with Chicago’s Environmental Encroachment.

Andrew Snyder received his PhD in Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Berkeley in 2018 with a dissertation about brass bands in Rio de Janeiro. He is an ethnomusicologist who plays trumpet and co-founded San Francisco’s Mission Delirium, and this month he began a research postdoc at the Ethnomusicology Institute at the New University of Lisbon in Portugal.

Emily Ruth Allen (@emmyru91) is a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology at Florida State University. She is currently working on a dissertation about parade musics in Mobile, Alabama’s Carnival celebrations. 

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Emily Ruth Allen

Emily Ruth Allen (@emmyru91) holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Florida State University. Her current research is about parade musics in Mobile, Alabama’s Carnival.

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