People of all ages and from all over the country came together for Somerville's seventh annual HONK! Festival, which ran from Thursday, Oct. 4 through Sunday, Oct. 8. Everyone decorated themselves in bright costumes, peculiar hats and body paint and gathered around the dynamic street music.


The Honk! Festival is a non-profit music event that is entirely supported by the community. The longest-running HONK! Festival takes place in Davis Square, but the idea has recently spread to Seattle and Austin, Texas.


There was a kick-off concert on Friday featuring an extensive variety of brass bands like Church Marching Band from Sonoma, Calif., Young Fellaz Brass Band from New Orleans and Pink Puffers Brass Band coming all the way from Rome. The HONK! Festival is definitely quirky, a strange experience for most first-timers when they see an "instrument petting zoo" at the concert entrance, decorative patches printed on recycled soda bottle paper and interpretive dancing. I remember watching an audience member climb a tree so he could view the concert from the top. Everyone around me looked up at him and smiled-there really are no rules here.


"It's really like a family ... you start to recognize familiar faces," explained an audience member last Friday in an interview with JustArts. "Every year that we come back, it's like no time has passed."


On Saturday, the busiest day of the festival, there was a free outdoor concert with 34 activist street bands. Some of the featured bands were Brass Liberation Orchestra, Chaotic Noise Marching Corps, The Primate Fiasco and Rude Mechanical Orchestra. Though every band was brass-based, each brought with it a distinct sound, a specific kind of eccentric energy.


The instrumentation for The Carnival Band, for example, included a wide variety of brass, drums, tambourine, woodwinds, bass and voice. Many of these instruments were hand-painted with vibrant designs. The band asked the audience to clap along and sing chants like "We got the music!" and "Feet don't fail me now!" Some of the band members wore togas; some wore long, flowing dresses; some painted their faces; and others wore giant hats.


"The music itself is very eclectic," expressed Mary Curtin, the festival's publicist, to JustArts. "The common thread for the bands is that they are all portable, can hit the streets unplugged and engage an audience on the street level."


The concert created a personal, interactive space because the bands were not restricted to a conventional stage. The festival was not so much about the bands as it was about sharing music with those around you and inviting them into an experience.


The festival also featured arts and community organizations like Bikes not Bombs, 350.org and Green Streets Initiative, all of which are grassroots environmental groups. HONK! is about making noise and bringing attention to political causes, but it does so in a creative and non-threatening way.


When I saw the Somerville community come together for the festival, I was struck by the transformative power of the music. There was an overriding sense of being alive, of being together and, most of all, a profound sense of being human.