Portland's queer activist street band Brassless Chaps is one of nearly 20 brass and street bands playing at the city's inaugural HONK! PDX festival Saturday and Sunday.
Courtesy of Liz Kasser
The sounds of horns and drums will echo through neighborhoods on Portland’s Eastside this weekend. Saturday marks the kickoff of the city’s first-ever HONK! PDX: a free, two-day brass and street band music festival, bringing together bands from around the Pacific Northwest.
HONK! Fest got its start in Massachusetts in 2008, and has spread to cities around the world since then. Liz Kasser, HONK! PDX’s principal coordinator, is a musician and a veteran of HONK! Fest West, Seattle’s version of the festival. Now a Portlander, she was moved to bring the joy of brass band and drumline music to Portland with a festival of its own.
“There’s so many brass bands here … Portland has such a great sense of community, and everyone comes together to help everyone, and it’s such a musical town too. And I was like, ‘why don’t we have one of those here? I might as well make one,’” she said.
Kasser’s HONK! origin story began in Seattle in 2017. She was hanging out at a friend’s house and was invited to come along with them to a protest march, and then told to grab an instrument. It was a musical house, with a variety of instruments to choose from. She picked up a tambourine.
”We made lots of music, and we chanted and walked through the streets of Seattle, and it was just the most magical time I’d ever had,” Kasser said.
She went on to join Rise Up! Action Band, her friends’ activist street marching band. After performing with them that year at HONK! Fest West, Kasser was hooked.
”The [HONK! community has] really given me a place to flourish and explore my self identity, and also just become a musician. I’d always wanted to play drums, and in Rise Up! Action Band, I was encouraged to pick up a snare drum and learn how to play. And here I am, six years later, still playing the drums,” she said.
Today, Kasser plays bass drum in Portland’s Brassless Chaps, a queer activist street band.
“It was really important, especially in Portland, to have a place where queers can come together and play music in an environment that’s not led by a cis white man. A place where we can all come together as a community and make music without pressure, and just have fun with it,” she said.
Brassless Chaps is one of nearly 20 brass and street bands playing at HONK! PDX in its first year. Many of the acts are local, like Unpresidented Brass Band, a social action-oriented, horn-driven marching band formed in Portland in the wake of the 2016 election, and the Last Regiment of Syncopated Drummers, whose music can often be heard echoing throughout Portland’s Central Eastside.
Portland bands with global musical influences on the lineup include Brazilian samba bands Banda Arrasta! and Portland Samba, and the Ukrainian band Chervona. Kasser said it was important to have multicultural music represented at HONK! PDX.
”Each culture has a music that is significant to them, and I think it’s really important that we showcase that, because a lot of people aren’t exposed to those kinds of music. Going to HONK! Fest and having all these different cultural types of music really helps open up your world,” she said.
Bands coming into town from Seattle include ensembles like Neon Brass Party, Chaotic Noise Marching Corps and Filthy Femcorps. Kasser called them “fun party bands that people love to get down to.”
Bands will play throughout the afternoon on Saturday at Washington Monroe Park, just outside Portland’s Revolution Hall. On Sunday, the festival will visit multiple locations in Portland’s Montavilla neighborhood. These locations were chosen with intention, and with the principal of reclaiming public space in mind.
”Revolution Hall, the field outside of there, in particular has historical significance of being a place where a lot of people met up in 2020 to go to the protests downtown. It’s a neighborhood where there’s a lot of renters, there’s a lot of people of different socioeconomic backgrounds. We want to bring together those people, who don’t get the chance to have free access to music,” Kasser said. She added that its central location and easy access by transit were other pluses for the event’s accessibility.
Meanwhile, she said, the Montavilla neighborhood has been historically underserved by the arts, particularly areas east of Portland’s 82nd Avenue. Kasser said folks behind the Montavilla Jazz Festival, now in its tenth year, have been supportive in helping make HONK! PDX a reality in Montavilla, as have neighborhood businesses and residents. The event is also partially funded by grants from Portland Events and Film and the Regional Arts and Culture Council.
Portlanders who come to HONK! PDX don’t have to be spectators alone. There are plenty of opportunities for public participation, another aspect of the festival that’s important to Kasser. On Saturday afternoon, a rudimentary drum workshop will be offered to anyone interested in brushing up on their skills, or learning for the first time, like she did in Seattle.
There’ll also be “all-band jams,” where anyone with an instrument in tow is invited to join in. A couple HONK! Fest standards will be open to all, with opportunities for solos encouraged.
”Everyone’s so willing to help each other out. If you don’t have the music, if you don’t know what people are playing, go up to somebody with your same instrumentation and check out their music, and they’re always willing to lend you advice,” Kasser said.
Her attitude — especially given her own musical background — is that it’s never too late to pick up an instrument.
“I really love the idea of somebody who hasn’t played an instrument since middle school [or] high school, who really loved it, and they put their instrument up on a shelf, in a closet somewhere, and it’s just been sitting there gathering dust: now is the opportunity to take that instrument off the shelf and bring it down and come jam with us,” she said.
To hear OPB’s interview with Liz Kasser, principal coordinator of HONK! PDX, plus some street band music , click on the audio player at the top of this page.