Brass Unbound
For the past couple of years, I have been heavily involved in organizing the HONK! Festival and playing in the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band, the band that kinda/sorta hosts this killer anarcho-democratic-participatory festival of activist street bands. The two dozen or so brass bands that show up to play at the festival are not your mother’s marching bands. Brass has come a long way since the janissary bands of the Ottoman Empire tried to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies. To give an example, here’s a short film that students at Tufts University made about HONK! 2008:
Download Title
Our own HONK! Festival has spawned HonkFest West, where I just spent a wicked cool Easter weekend drumming and carousing in the streets of Seattle. Honk is now finding its way into every nook and cranny of popular culture, world-wide. Check out Josh Kun in the Times (read the full stories). And check out the video at the end. Infectious, easy to play! I think we’re on to something here.
They’re With the Band, Speaking That Global Language: Brass
By JOSH KUN, New York Times | April 9, 2006
. . . Los Lobos brought out Los Cenzontles, a Northern California banda troupe. While Mexican bandas (brass bands) can have as many as 20 members, Los Cenzontles didn’t need much more than a tuba, a trumpet, a thudding bass drum and a pair of clarinets to turn the club into a raucous cantina.
Brass band music can have this effect. The stammering pepper-spray of horns, the crisp snaps of snare rolls: it’s precise and excessive at once, a joyous emotional tornado awash in spit, sweat and celebration. No wonder it’s one of the world’s most-spoken musical languages - from Serbian villages to Manhattan’s bustling “gypsy punk scene” to this year’s Grammy Awards, where Kanye West reinvented “Gold Digger” by having a marching band play, running through the aisles. Awareness of international brass styles has blossomed in recent years in the United States . . .
<snip>
“People are tired of corporate-friendly rock ‘n’ roll and the cold nihilism of the electronic music scene,” said Mr. Kaplan of Balkan Beat Box. “They’re hungry for this really sweaty, personal, alcohol-driven, familiar, ceremony-like music. There’s something very healthy about all of this interest in brass music. People just want to get back in touch with their feelings.”
Mexican Bands Hear Success Calling
By JOSH KUN, New York Times | April 5, 2009
ONE of the biggest Latin hits of the past year arrived on the Billboard charts all the way from Caborca, a small desert hill town in the Mexican state of Sonora, mostly thanks to a cellphone.
Last year Los Pikadientes de Caborca recorded “La Cumbia Del Río”- a bare-boned singalong about dancing and partying by the side of a local river - on a home computer, uploaded it to their cellphones and, with help from Bluetooth and Memory Sticks, shared it with friends. The song quickly went viral…
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiBo4ViND...[/youtube]
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiBo4ViN…
Tags: activist bands, brass bands, Honk, honkfest, linkedin, marching bands, street bands
Categories:
Action
