HONK NYC! takes over the East Village with 18 bands performing in 4 locations, plus a plethora of parades!
DISCOUNTS ON FOOD, DRINK & SHOPPING
EVIMA ❤️ you!
East Village Independent Merchant Association (EVIMA) is offering HONK NYC! revelers an incredible array of discounts & special deals.
Drinks, food, shopping, gifts, and MORE!
FAB OPEN STREETS (Ave B between 8th & 9th St)
Trumpeter / composer Frank London first gained renown as a member of the Klezmatics, Hasidic New Wave. His mile-long resumé has seen London adding virtuosity to hundreds of concerts and recordings by everyone from John Zorn to They Might Be Giants, Mel Torme to Iggy Pop, Pink Floyd, Youssou N’dour, LaMonte Young, Allen Ginsberg and LL Cool J. Called the “mystical high priest of Avant-Klez jazz,” Frank has made 30 solo recordings and is featured on over 400 CDs.
Cobu, based in New York City, was created as a Live Rhythm Performing Arts Group in 2000. Yako Miyamoto, the founder of Cobu was a poster girl and veteran member of the off broadway-hit STOMP. COBU performed for NBA halftime show at Madison Square Garden, United Nations Headquarters, the Shakespeare in the park, Lincoln center, the Beacon Theater, etc. in LasVegas: the Colosseum, MGM Arena, the Mandalay Bay, the Key Arena in Seattle and so on. Cobu was the winner of the Wella International Trend Talent Award, and won the Audience Favorite Award New York Fringe Festival, received the Grand Prize by K-ollaboration, listed as one of the 30 shows to see by Time Out.
Melvin Gibbs is a composer, musician, artist, and writer, born, raised, and currently based in Brooklyn, N.Y. He has been called “the greatest bassist in the world” by Time Out New York magazine and was the 2019 winner of JazzTimes Magazine’s Critics Poll in the category Electric Bass. His wide-ranging musical resume includes membership in bands ranging from the no-wave of Defunkt (where his work was deeply influential on the Red Hot Chili Peppers) to the avant-jazz of the Decoding Society, to Power Tools with Bill Frisell & Ronald Shannon Jackson, the alt-rock Rollins Band (where he was nominated for a Grammy), Socialybrium with Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame inductee Bernie Worrell, and the Zig Zag Power Trio with Vernon Reid and Will Calhoun of the band Living Colour. As a bassist and producer, he has worked with Femi Kuti, Caetano Veloso, dead prez, Eddie Palmieri, David Byrne, Arto Lindsay, and Sonny Sharrock.
AVE B OPEN STREETS (Ave B between 10th & 11th St)
The brainchild of drummer Todd Isler and saxophonist, Lily White, Swunky Z is a celebration of horns that combines Swing and Funk (Swunk). You will dance and dance and dance.
L Train Brass Band is a modular collective of nearly 100 brass, reed, and percussion musicians. This NYC nonprofit community organization is composed of diversely talented musicians who are genuinely excited by the opportunity to play anywhere and everywhere, covering a wide variety of music, from pop and hip-hop—to funk and traditional NOLA jazz—to eclectic original charts. LTBB embodies a music for life ethos by empowering busy adults to pick up an instrument and make music within a safe, structured environment that promotes creative self-expression and welcomes individuals from all musical backgrounds and walks of life.
Young Fellaz Brass Band is a lively second line styled brass band from New Orleans, LA. It began in 2005 originally with humble beginnings, only having 3 members walking around their neighborhood playing their instruments out of the love of music. Over the course of the next 6 years, the band would flourish to 8 members, along with overcoming many obstacles and setting many milestones for such a young group of musicians, such as recording 3 studio albums, numerous festivals in New Orleans, along with performing in many states across the United States, including the HONK! TX festival. The band’s style of music covers many genres, including traditional jazz, hip-hop, R&B, rock and pop tunes.
Banda Rim Bam Bum is a collective of 23 musicians from Chile inspired by traditional Andean, Latin-American carnaval, and Afro-Latino rhythms. Their original compositions feature indigenous rhythms and melodies (Morenada, Diablada, Tinku), Salsa, and Frevo fused with Funk, Ska and Rocksteady. Adapting popular and folkloric repertoire to wind and percussion, their rhythmic-musical mixture captures the essence and spirit of Carnaval.
LA PLAZA CULTURAL (9th St at Ave C)
The New York Chinese FreeMasons Athletic Club (CFMAC), Hung Ching, exists to educate our youths about Chinese heritage through the culture of lion dance, martial arts and athletics. We are the oldest performing Lion Dance team in New York City!
The HONK Family Band (established in New York City in the summer of 2022) is a multi-dimensional community ensemble created to connect musicians, sound-makers, dancers and spectacle-doers across the city (and by extension, visiting artists from outside of New York City proper). First and foremost, the HFB is a space for everyone to take part in under a collective and guiding spirit of love for music and a desire to deepen bonds of friendship across cultural boundaries, regardless of musical background and any other core identifier. If this spirit is in place, the HFB will live and operate as it was designed: to support and uplift HONK! NYC’s work of highlighting and advancing global street band music in as many forms as possible, through “music-making, pageantry, audience participation, and education.”
Vongku Pak is a Korean-born NYC-based performing artist and founder of VP Korean Drum and Dance Troupe. He was trained in several different regional traditional Korean drums including pungmul, samulnori, and traditional dance. He has been performed at numerous venues and festivals in the tri-state area as well as more than twenty countries. His music is not limited to folk arts but has expanded into contemporary world music. He was a finalist for the 2012 NYFA Fellowship in the category of Folk/ Traditional Arts,
Sambata Galaxy Reborn is led by Ricardo Torres, whose drumming career spans five decades. He has played by Astrud Gilberto, Mongo Santamaria, George Benson, Joe Jackson, Pharaoh Saunders, among many other pop, folk, jazz, and Latin artists.
Nice Brass has entered the chat! With the motto of “you arrange it and we’ll play it,” this band is excited to bring you anything from nostalgic bangers to modern bops.
TOMPKINS SQUARE PARK
Black Fire Percussion is a hip hop Drumline from Brooklyn, NY. Always displaying the perfect combination of showmanship and technique, Black Fire percussion has been tearing up the streets of NY for over a decade.
Mambembé NY, a group that uses the drums and the beat of samba reggae, intends to value, preserve and expand Afro-Brazilian Percussive music. It is based in NYC, but with members from all over the world. The group also celebrates the multicultural makeup of this city, in which each member feels the music in their own way. Our intention is to delight people and spread positivity with our beats and dances.
Unintended Consequences Since 2015, this funky little instrumental band has entertained NYC with a truly eclectic playlist of popular tunes of the last century - from Tin Pan Alley standards, through rock-n-roll and into the millennium, including well-known music from films, TV shows and even video games. For three years, UC was the house band, playing almost every Tuesday night at SpoonFedNYC, Randy Witherspoon's restaurant in Hell's Kitchen and it has played over four years of busking appearances in Washington Square Park. UC has been a member of the HONK community for three years.
The Rude Mechanical Orchestra, New York City’s radical marching band, has been laying down the soundtrack to the revolution since 2004. We exist to serve movements for social justice, playing protests, picket lines, marches and benefits for good causes across the five boroughs and beyond with a repertoire of folk songs and pop songs from around the world.
