Maybe you played in your high school band, or maybe you and your friends had a band in high school. Or perhaps you always wanted to play an instrument, but felt that you didn’t have a sense for music. However, music is something intrinsic to being human. As noted by musical thinker and world- renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks, “Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does--humans are a musical species.”
Indeed, this is the spirit of the HONK! festival, for “as often as they honk in protest, they also perform to celebrate the causes and institutions they support: multicultural festivals, peace conferences, social forums, artists collectives, community gardens, children's workshops, neighborhood fundraisers, block parties, relief benefits and homeless shelters. In these cases, as in every case, the honkers’ ultimate goal is to have fun, to relish the art of making fun as a form of individual and collective transcendence, and to encourage others to see and do the same.”
One of Tufts’ goals is to engender a sense of community activism in students, to create well-rounded individuals through “active citizenship.” The Tufts/Somerville Honk U! Project will hopes to provide a unique way of engaging with community activists working for social justice through art and music.
In becoming part of HONKU!, students will not only be able to participate in the festival, but will also have the chance to work one on one with Charlie Keil, Tufts’ Artist in Residence. Keil believes that everyone was “born to groove,” like Sacks, Keil posits that humans are a musical species, but his approach is based on a more social and community level than Sacks. For Keil, everyone is a musician, and music is not about perfection, rather it is the imperfection in music that gives it beauty. The world is imperfect, life is chaos and change, and music should reflect that. Music should be a space for connection, for celebration of the chaos and change, in defiance of a society that constantly demands perfection.
In creating a space for connection, we also create the possibility for participation, for an exploration of the self within the context of a community. From this participation, blossoms a chain of further connections; “Participation = consubstantiation = sacrament = pre-symbolic merging of consciousness and matter = the feeling that you are in the music and the music is in you = groove = the happiness and health (mental-and-physical) of all this “joyous science” as a foundation for imagination and creativity” (Keil, Participation Theory). This view of music as a celebration of the imperfection, as creating community, and as a nurturer of imagination and creativity is not widely held amongst the institutions of cultural propagation in society.
Keil asks of us, “What is the extent of musical participation in your local schools and communities? Is musical study exclusive and “by audition-only," or is music all-inclusive and open to all who have an interest in making music? What can be done to open the doors wide enough for all to join in?” It is a rare and beautiful opportunity for music enthusiasts to come and participate in HONKU!, to engender and nourish the imagination and creativity that gave birth to the HONK! festival.