HONK NYC

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Welcome to our House. House of HONK! An artist run organization connecting street bands & spectacle artists with audiences across NYC.

HONK NYC brings the tradition of global street band music and spectacle to audiences everywhere — in parks, at clubs, in schools, and out in the streets.
“Honk NYC!,” brings together ensembles from all over the world in a bid to jump-start enthusiasm for brass in the city. - York Times

10/09/2026

LINK IN OUR BIO TO RSVP!

🥖🎺 JOIN US FOR A HONK! COMMUNITY POTLUCK!

📅 SATURDAY, OCT. 17 | 6:30 PM
📍 Ki Smith Gallery
170 Forsyth St., Lower East Side, NYC
🕖 6:30 PM | 🎟️ FREE!
📩 RSVP on Partiful to let us know you're coming! Link in our bio!

Bring a dish to share! 🍲 Gather with the HONK! family for bread-breaking, stories, hugs, and song. ❤️

The night will include an opening ceremony with Batala, a potluck dinner, music by Funkrust Brass Band, a likely jam 🎶, and a special screening of a HONK NYC! 2020 documentary by longtime HONK! collaborator and co-producer Victoria Lingchong. 👀 If you've been to HONK NYC!, you may well see yourself onscreen!

🥁 Batalá New York

🎺 FUNKRUST BRASS BAND

📽️ This Is Our New York: The Five Boroughs of HONK by Victoria Linchong
At the party, enjoy a screening of this 2020 documentary by longtime HONK collaborator and co-producer Victoria Linchong. Linchong is a Taiwanese-American writer, actor, and director whose work often delves into untold history, immigrant stories, alternative communities, and the female gaze. She is a Sundance finalist screenwriter who produced the world premiere of Tennessee Williams last short plays. Returning to NYC after four years in Berlin, where she produced the critically acclaimed Full Moon Cabaret and performed burlesque as Viva Lamore, she is currently working on Viva Lamore's Forgotten History, a web series highlighting women and people of color who have been sidelined from mainstream Western history.

❤️🥖 Bring a dish, bring a friend, and celebrate the HONK! community with food, music, and film! RSVP on Partiful! Link in our bio!

LiveMusicNYC BrassBand FilmScreening

10/08/2026

🗽 HONK! FOR DEMOCRACY / NO KINGS VOTEFEST 🎺
MEET THE BANDS REPRESENTING AT VOTEFEST!

Artists For a Free World + HONK Family Band
📅 SATURDAY, OCT. 17 | HONK! FOR DEMOCRACY
📍 Washington Square Park, NYC
🕑 2–5 PM | 🆓 FREE!
Join us at the No Kings: VoteFest NYC for an afternoon of music, community, and civic engagement!

MEET THE BANDS

🎶 Artists for a Free World
In 2017, Arts for Art began Artists For a Free World (AFFW), a marching band that supported citywide demonstrations through joyful noise and movement. It was an empowering experience. We saw the importance and power of music to bring people together. AFFW is a direct artistic response to oppressive fascist ideology and regime. Artists For a Free World empowers all Positive Creative Healing Actions. We are committed to long-term engagement to ensure survival of our Shared Humanity. No one is free unless we are all free.

🎶 HONK Family Band
Born on the Open Streets of New York City in 2022, HONK Family Band has fast become one of New York’s favorite, first-call party bands. Bringing the sounds of The Big Easy and beyond to diverse audiences at inclusive events across all reaches of The Big Apple, the ever evolving group plays a wide variety of genres, performing everything from Rebirth Brass Band, Dizzy Gillespie, and Duke Ellington to the Talking Heads, Nirvana, Fela Kuti, and more.
When the group is called to parade, their innovative blend of New Orleans standards with Brazilian samba rhythms has led Second Lines for the Jersey City Jazz Fest, The Brooklyn Botanical Garden, The Coney Island Mermaid Parade, Bryant Park, The Village Halloween Parade, Sinterklaas, countless neighborhood Open Streets celebrations, community events, and more.

🎺🗽 Come march, listen, dance, and make some joyful noise with us!

10/06/2026

👻 HONK! FROM BEATS TO BOP! GHOST BAND RETURNS FOR A 4TH YEAR! 👻🎺

The venues are gone, but the music is VERY MUCH ALIVE. 🎶
Come to McHale's FRIDAY, OCT. 16, for HONK Happy Hour and live music before we head out to Midtown's musical ghosts. Bring an instrument and join the parade! We shall play homage to the greats along Swing Street, marching through Midtown to haunt the legendary music halls and old haunts of yesteryear.

MEET THE BANDS
👻 Ghost Band: Ghost Band Plays Ghost Venues is a project of musician Stefan Zeniuk and HONK NYC!, celebrating the music and creative spaces that once made NYC legendary. We'll parade through generations and genres of music history, bringing joyful noise to the sites of long-gone music halls, now home to boutiques, banks, hotels, and more.

🥁 Afoxé Alkebulan Acá: Afoxé Alkebulan Acá is an Afro‑Atlantic practice of percussion, song, and public ritual based in the global crossroads known as NYC. This project, led by master percussionist Okai Musik and educator-leader Deinya Phenix, is inspired by African Diasporic artistic traditions and cross-cultural experiences that have led to fusions such as jazz, salsa, and hip hop. In that in-between space, we have called upon disparate peoples into a musical Black family reunion enriched with aché, solidarity, joy, and belonging.

🎺 Hungry March Band: Founded in Brooklyn in 1997 for the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, HMB embodies the spirit of NYC’s streets with an inimitable brass sound and inspired, eclectic dance. HMB has shared its creativity with audiences across the United States, South America, and Europe, where it has been embraced by a longstanding community of brass bands.

🎺 Inconvenient Brass Band Making their HONK NYC! Festival debut, Inconvenient Brass Band “puts a horn in your side.”

PLUS your emcee Viva Lamore

This is our FOURTH edition of Ghost Band Plays Ghost Venues. In previous years, we've haunted the East Village, Williamsburg, and the Lower East Side. This time, we're taking over Midtown!

📍 MEET: McHale's Bar & Grill
251 W. 51st St., NYC

🍻 Happy Hour: 6–8 PM
🎶 Live Music: 7:30 PM
👻 Ghost Band: 8 PM
🗓 FRIDAY, OCT. 16
🎟 $FREE!

🎺 Bring an instrument. Come march. Help us keep NYC's musical history alive!

10/05/2026

Meet artstar Mike Bade, the creative mastermind behind our festival posters. As HONK NYC's art director, Mike has conceptualized and produced 15 posters for us over the years, enlisted some of NYC’s favorite artists. Here’s a sampling, dating back to 2009 (when we went by "Bonk")!

“I spent decades at ad agencies and production companies art directing and directing commercials and things,” Mike says. “A lot of the illustrators I’ve used for HONK I’ve animated in my ad past, like Peter Bagge () and Dame Darcy (). Others, like Peter Kuper () this year, are illustrators I’ve always wanted to work with.”

Find more of Mike’s work at mikebadenyc.com.
IG:

10/04/2026

"🎺 MEET HONK NYC! OPENING NIGHT BANDS! 🎺

THURSDAY, OCT. 15
Our 20th Anniversary HONK NYC! Blowout kicks off Thursday, Oct. 15, with two bands making their HONK! debut!

🔥 No Small Money Brass Band is making its HONK NYC! debut this year. This NYC brass band has been playing the music of Africa and the Caribbean since 2008.

🔥 Bhangra Liberation Orchestra brings rebellious, joyful sounds rooted in bhangra, qawwali, Afrobeat, and jazz.

🥁 THEN WE CALL EVERYBODY IN FOR A BIG BRASS JAM! Led by Indofunk Satish of HONK Family Band, this open, NOLA-style jam is your chance to jump in, play along, and make some joyful noise!

BYO INSTRUMENT. | $FREE.
COME PLAY. COME DANCE. COME HONK! 🎉

📍 Fifth Hammer Brewing
10-28 46th Ave., Long Island City, NY 11101

🗓 THURSDAY, OCT. 15 | 6:30–9:30 PM

10/01/2026

THE FULL HONK NYC! 20TH ANNIVERSARY FALL FESTIVAL SCHEDULE IS HERE! Honk! family, the wait is over! 🎉

Four days. Six events. Brass bands, big beats, dancing in the streets, community, and plenty of joyful NOISE! 📣

📅 THURSDAY, OCT. 15 | OPENING NIGHT
📍 Fifth Hammer Brewing, LIC | 10-28 46th Ave, Long Island City, NY
🕡 6:30–9:30 PM | 🆓 FREE!

Featuring:
• No Small Money Brass Band
• Bhangra Liberation Orchestra
• HONK Family Jam led by Indofunk Satish
• BYO INSTRUMENT AND JOIN THE JAM!

📅 FRIDAY, OCT. 16 | HONK! FROM BEATS TO BOP: GHOST BAND!
📍 McHale's, Midtown Manhattan | 251 W. 51st St., New York, NY
🕕 Happy Hour: 6–8 PM
🎶 Live Music: 7:30 PM | Ghost Band: 8 PM | 🆓 FREE!

Meet us at McHale's for live music, then march and pay homage to the great ghost venues and old haunts of yesteryear!

Featuring:
• Ghost Band
• Afoxé Alkebulan Acá
• Inconvenient Brass Band
🎺 AND YOU!
Bring an instrument and make some noise with us!

📅 SATURDAY, OCT. 17 | HONK! FOR DEMOCRACY
📍 Washington Square Park, NYC
🕑 2–4 PM | 🆓 FREE!
Join us at the No Kings: VoteFest NYC for an afternoon of music, community, and civic engagement!

Featuring:
• Artists for a Free World
• HONK Family Band

📅 SATURDAY, OCT. 17 | COMMUNITY POTLUCK
An evening of food, stories, hugs, and song!
Hosted by HONK Family Band and featuring Funkrust!

🥘 Bring a dish to share and come celebrate the HONK! community.
📩 RSVP: [email protected]

📅 SUNDAY, OCT. 18 | HONK! THE OPEN STREETS
📍 Underhill Plaza, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
🕛 Noon–5 PM | 🆓 FREE!
An afternoon of outdoor performances, creativity, dancing, and revelry en plein air!

Featuring:
• Swunky Z
• Pressure Point Brass Band
• Peniel Dance with live drumming
• Live screenprinting with Darkin Brown
• HONK Family Band

📅 SUNDAY, OCT. 18 | HONK! AT THE LOOVE
📍 Loove Annex, Brooklyn
🕖 7 PM
📌 238 N. 12th St., Brooklyn
Featuring:
• Newman Taylor Baker
• Criss-Cross Big Band

📣 SPREAD THE WORD. SHARE THE SCHEDULE. SEE YOU IN THE STREETS!

09/30/2026

THE COUNTDOWN IS ON. THE SCHEDULE DROPS TOMORROW! 🎺

Our fearless leader, Sara Valentine — executive & artistic director of House of HONK, dancer, percussionist, impresario of chaos — takes us back to HONK! NYC’s accidental dinner-party founding and teases what’s in store for our FINAL FALL BLOWOUT, Oct. 15–18! 🎉🔥

🎤
🎥 Wilder Selzer

🎺 A shout-out to some of the bands that started it all:

Tomorrow, we reveal where, when, and who’s making the noise. 👀🥁

09/28/2026

Twenty years of HONK! deserves a poster this good. 🎺💥🎨

For our 20th anniversary, our longtime art director Mike Bade envisioned a poster that could capture the joyful chaos, rebellious spirit, and larger-than-life energy of HONK! He enlisted prolific graphic novelist and cartoonist Peter Kuper to bring that vision to the page.

Kuper’s work has appeared in Charlie Hebdo, The New Yorker, The Nation, and Mad, and he is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Harvard professor. His unmistakable visual language makes this year's poster as bold, unruly, and full of life as HONK! Itself. Catch Kuper's upcoming exhibition, Monarch's Journey, at the American Museum of Natural History, opening Friday, Oct. 16.

When asked why folks should come to HONK! NYC, Kuper deadpanned: "Music? NYC? What are you waiting for? Go!"

Poster design and art direction by Mike Bade. Illustration by Peter Kuper ().

A SNEAK-PEEK AT THE PLAN...
💃 Thurs., Oct. 15: Make noise and make party at Fifth Hammer Brewing in Long Island City.
🥁 Fri., Oct. 16: Ghost Band Plays Ghost Venues Returns. Meet us in Midtown.
🎺 Sat., Oct. 17: HONK! for Democracy with us at the No Kings: VoteFest NYC event in Washington Square Park. ( )
Our Community Dinner follows...
😎 Sun., Oct. 18: Sunday's HONK! The Open Streets event in Prospect Heights will include an afternoon of performances, making, and revelry en plein air, culminating in a glorious closing show at Loove Annex in Williamsburg.

Schedule drops Oct. 1 — mark your calendars! 💛

Address

New York, NY

Website

http://www.honknyc.com/, https://instagram.com/honknyc, https://honknyc.com/shows, https://partiful.com/u/mWDr0cx9frvMMu

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Heart River Center for Intuitive Healing

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