Crazy White Folks
Took in the Honky, er, um, Honk Fest parade earlier this afternoon.
Not to to put too fine a point on it, but it was hugely, if not wholly white. The participants, the crowd. Maybe the very idea of it.
None of which is to say a good time wasn't had by all. White people mean well, for the most part.
It's not really a criticism, or a grievance, or a judgment, just an observation and gentle reminder. You know, something to think about. I mean, is the concept of HONK! inherently white? Or is it just that it hasn't caught on amongst other races and ethnicities yet?
There's nothing saying it needs to be such a white thing—marching bands know no race, after all—so I was left sort of idly wondering what could be done at future HONK! festivals to encourage more mixed-race activist street bands. There was definitely gender parity. It just seems if you're going to be an activist street band, being a racially and ethnically diverse one makes sense, too. It might take some effort, but then that's why it's called activism and not passivism.
Because there's something happening with race right now in this country that may prove bigger than the war, and more disastrous, in the long-run. And a glimmer of that's what I saw deep in the heart of prosperous white liberal Cambridge at HONK! among all the zaniness, dancing santas, jugglers on stilts, giant puppets, political theater and awesome music.
I especially loved these guys:
The March Fourth Marching Band was tight, fun, and with just the right amount of kind of creepy Tom Waitsy itinerate circus mystique. I can imagine this bunch being very incestuous, for some reason. This is the kind of band you'd run away from home to join up with. They were bringing up the rear in the procession. The parade organizers definitely saved the best for last.
There were jugglers and hoola-hoopers on stilts, and I was talking to S. about how funny it is how much time boys spend learning to juggle and playing with balls and so on. I have a friend who spends a lot of time at his X-Box, and always justifies it with the old hand-eye coordination argument. But, come on, how much hand-eye coordination do you really need? It's not like you're going out to hunt mastodons with spears every workday.
Anyway, the thing I liked about March Fourth is that their activism is not overtly or explicitly political. It's not centered on a specific issue or policy of the administration, or what have you. They recognize that the most political art is the least political. Because it shows that there are places politics has no power, that there are things, like art, more powerful than politics. When you make art that is political, it's always "inside the box" that politics has made for it.
There was plenty of run-of-the-mill agitprop on display to balance out March Fourth, of course...
And that was OK, too (although the Sacco/Vanzetti guys were technically only activists marching and not a band—but I suppose there's a certain talent involved in walking down the street while holding a sign, too).
There was a lot of political theater along the way, including this storklike wraith of nuclear anihilation which I admit I thought was supposed to be a horribly mutated dove of peace at first—before I saw the bomb hanging from its beak...
Political theater on parade is a hard thing to do. Because you can't just stop at your whim and present some elaborate scenario. Whatever it is you have to say has to be comprehensible on the fly. And I'll admit, aside from the general sense of protest, some of it escaped me.
But it was still fun to watch, for the most part.
My favorite was probably the human hamsters in the mobile treadmill, though...
However, I did not see the one thing that would have taken it over the top for me...
...but then that's another parade down a different street, innit?
All I can say with certainty is that white people are crazy, and they need to get out MORE. These HONKY! Fests ought to be twice or three times a year. I mean, think about it. You remember how many people showed up to see those old houses moved a few blocks down Mass Ave last summer?
White people are clearly desperate for parades. We should definitely have more of them.
Maybe the makeup of the parade and crowd was different from the crowds at the event on Saturday, which I went to. But I actually expected the crowd to be made up of the typical batik-wearing Johnny-D's-going white people that tend to go to these kinds of things, but was actually pleasantly surprised to see that both the bands and the crowds were pretty well mixed up. I don't have current demographics of Somerville at my fingertips, but if anybody was underrepresented, it was the Somerville Brazillian contingent.
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Hmm.
I literally did not see a single person of color in the several marching bands on parade, and very, very few in the crowd. But I fully expected to hear from people who had a different impression or experience. I did not see all the bands, myself. (But I invite you to have a look at the HONK! website or check out the Honk! MySpace page.)
Many bands were not from Somerville, btw, and the demographics of the area were not my basis for mentioning the lack of color in the festival. I was not suggesting a quota system, mandated from above. I wasn't bean-counting, just pointing out the obvious.
I myself was simply struck by what might be the sad lack of a felt need among participants to connect, especially through music, with people from all different backgrounds, which would seem natural given the nature of HONK!
And my point, if I have to make one, is that folks of every race and culture should make an effort--and "effort" implies effort here, since our increasingly stratified society makes it more and more difficult--to connect with folks of other races and cultures, especially in our self-celebratory "activist" lifestyles.
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"I literally did not see a single person of color in the several marching bands on parade"
well, then you just weren't looking very closely. people of color figure prominently in (off the top of my head) The Original Big Seven, the Brass Liberation Orchestra, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, among others.
it would be great if ALL the bands were more diverse, for sure. but considering the social justice work that many of these bands spend the rest of their time doing, your "honky fest" implications are a little misguided.
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Nothing implied, honker. I think I was pretty explicit about my observations and thoughts on the matter. And anyway, honkies can crusade for social justice, too!
I don't have anything against honkies, Lord knows. Some of my best friends are honkies.
I would like to stress that I took pictures of the event. And looking back through them I found one or two of the bands you mentioned, and, again, did not find a single person of color in them (but then I'm not sure what "figure prominently" means to you).
Lots of other people took pictures, too. I invite you to check them out on flickr and decide for yourself how honky this event really was. It's probably pretty relative.
For myself, I can reiterate that I did not see a single person of color in the several marching bands on parade that I saw. I should stress, too, that I did not go to HONK! expecting it to be one thing or another. The overwhelming whiteness was just striking enough that I noticed it, particularly since I've lived and worked in very racially mixed environs in Boston much of my time here.
I also said that I did not see all the bands, myself. Of the bands you mentioned, I do have pictures of the Rude Mechanical Orchestra which back up my impression. Even their website does not feature a person of color in the band. My photos of the parade jibe with that. I applaud their soical justic work, but that's not what I saw at HONK! I saw the band.
Brass Liberation Orchestra says on their website that they"work to build a multigender/multiracial/multigenerational group that enhances and strengthens the culture of the Left." And I believe them. They did have a black standard bearer, I see from pictures.
The Original Big Seven, whom I did not see at the parade--I can't be everywhere at once, people!--seem to have been more or less the flipside of the coin.
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this picture of the RMO includes several people of color (including people of asian, middle eastern, and latino descent, who might "look white" to you). as an RMO member, i feel a bit weird arguing about this, and pointing out what might seem like "token" people of color (because the band IS largely white), but it's not fair for the people of color in the band to become invisible just because they're standing among white people.
anyway, not meant to come off as confrontational... indeed, the festival was not as diverse as it could have been, and i'm glad you viewed it critically. it felt overwhelmingly white to me as well, and i hope we can work to change that, while avoiding generalizations that devalue diversity we DO have.
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As a white person who is desperate for parades, I agree that we should have more of them. ;-)
One of the bands, the Big Seven from New Orleans, was nearly all black, and another band had an Asian (possibly Filipina) member, but I also thought that the festival was quite white overall.
I've noticed a similar lack of diversity in one of my favorite activities, contra dancing, which has a zany, progressive spirit like HonkFest's. It bothers me, and I'm not really sure what I can do about it. I'm not sure how to make HonkFest more welcoming to people of color either, but I'm glad you pointed it out and I hope that some of the organizers of the festival take it into account.
(On a different note, the March Fourth Marching Band was awesome! If you saw a girl in a black shirt, pink skirt, and jeans dancing alongside them, that was me...I wanted to be in the parade, so I jumped in at the end and ended up dancing next to them the whole way from Davis to Harvard.)
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