16 bands ~ over 300 musicians!
A truly international festival!
16 bands are coming to HONK! Bradford – from the UK, Australia and America, Spain, France Germany and the Netherlands.
We can’t wait to welcome them to the UK City of Culture 2025 and bring their energy and passion to the streets of Bradford.
Xaranga’n Roll
Xaranga’n Roll are based in Valencia in Spain, a group of musicians with more than 15 years of experience.
They’ll make any party unforgettable!
Storytellers Streetband
Storytellers Streetband are a Newcastle based eight piece who play locally, nationally and internationally at festivals, food markets, and any outdoor location. They started performing outdoors alongside storyteller Chris Bostock in Covid lockdown.
BLAST Furness
BLAST Furness, the 20+ strong and 20+ year old street band of the ancient town of Ulverston in South Cumbria, demonstrate freedom with joyous musical reverberations at festivals, weddings, markets, gatherings and parades and generate high octane street music from New Orleans and Brazil to eastern Europe and Africa and more…
Bandanarama
Bandanarama play a high energy mash up of disco, indie and rock hits with a New Orleans vibe specialising in parades and festival performances. They are from Hull and East Riding of Yorkshire, and have been performing since 2015. Dressed like a mob of bikers and rockers, playing a wide range of brass, woodwind and drums Bandanarama are ‘Born to be Wild’ and Fun! Their motto is simple: It Must be Fun!
Cacophany Arkestra
Cacophany Arkestra from Preston have been playing since 2014. They’re a Caribbean Carnival inspired, live music group who perform in costume at processions, on a truck or on stage at many regional events. They play a mixture of calypso, soca and jazz tunes in their own style, often adding an environmental twist to the lyrics. They recently pioneered the use of megaphones in backpack costumes and a green bin trike PA for added bass volume on the road!
Horns Of Plenty
Entertaining audiences with a lively blend of global street music, Horns of Plenty are a band with plenty of volume! With around 35 enthusiastic members, they boast a multitude of brass, saxes, clarinets and percussion. Based in Oxford, you’ll find them anywhere the audience is smiling – at festivals, parades, carnivals and street parties across Oxfordshire and beyond.
Boom Dang
Boom Dang from Barrow-in-Furness is an internationally acclaimed side-ways drumming street-band. Performing with phatt rhythms, choreography and tuned percussion, they play their original mix of Drum & Bass, Bhangra, Hip-Hop, Afro-Beat, Merengue, Moroccan Trance and Maracatu. They WOW audiences where ever they go with their heady mix of live beats, towering drums, giant drum-kits and PURE joy.
Baybeat Streetband
Featuring a blend of Brazilian, Cuban, North African, South Asian, Caribbean, Pop and more, the Baybeat horns and percussion band of all ages and abilities from Morecambe features remarkable young musicians performing alongside a mixture of professional and community players. Classic Baybeat repertoire features James Brown, Bob Marley and Yazoo, recent additions include sea shanties, merengues and hip-hop.
Pompier Poney Club
The Pompier Poney Club is a riotous international brass band born in Marseille, blending punk energy, ska rhythms, and flamboyant covers from Dalida to The Specials. They light up streets, festivals, and dance floors with explosive performances, neon gear, and unapologetic joy. Part fanfare, part firestorm – expect sweat, chaos, and brass-fuelled euphoria.
Homecoming Brass Band
African influenced music played by a Bradford based New Orleans influenced brass band. The Homecoming Brass Band are seasoned musicians from varied backgrounds playing brass and percussion, bringing their own interpretations of world, funk, Latin American and original grooves. On the scene since 2023, they’ve been building a reputation for good dancing vibes and that party feeling.
Stroud Red Band
The Stroud Red Band (from Stroud!) is a community-based ensemble that plays on the streets in support of progressive causes. They play a selection of African, Latin, protest and the odd Jazz or pop tune, along with favourite Marxist marching classics including Bella Ciao, the Red Flag and the Internationale.
Tinnitussis
Tinnitussis from Hamburg, Germany… There are many of them, they’re loud, kind of cute, good-looking, and they just put you in a good mood! They’re not just covers, but creatively refined – and suddenly you’re dancing to ABBA, A-ha, Scooter, and Billie Eilish again, wanting to stock up on wind instruments for possible lockdowns, blackouts, or worse, and you’ll be a Tinnitussis at heart!
The Ambling Band
The Ambling Band are a fun loving wind and beat powered streetband born in Bristol as protest band for the miners strikes in the 1980’s and support for the CND campaigners at Greenham Common. In more recent times, they’ve performed at carnivals, festivals, weddings, parties and fundraising busks for charities. They are so looking forward to playing Up North in Bratford! The Ambling Band, fun on the edge of madness!
Good Trouble Brass Band
The Good Trouble Brass Band is a large, not-for-profit, “raucous, stomp-your-foot-and-belt-out-the-choruses” activist New Orleans-style street band based in Somerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts USA with a mission to fight for social justice causes and support community events while having fun and spreading joy through music. They are also part of the organising force behind the original HONK! Festival of activist street bands that has taken place annually since 2006 in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Toeters & Bellen
Toeters & Bellen are a street band from Amsterdam playing music from all over the world on streets, squares, in parks, neighbourhoods and at demonstrations in the Netherlands and further afield. Over the last three decades the band has enjoyed joining other orchestras and various artists on stages & festivals, parties, journeys or otherwise!
OZ HONKeroos
With a line-up of wind, brass and percussion the OZ HONKeroos are coming all the way to HONK! from Wollongong, NSW Australia. Their high energy repertoire is influenced by the musical traditions of New Orleans brass bands, Klezmer, Balkan, Roma and others. Joining together specially for HONK! Bradford, band members are drawn from the Con Artists, Crow, Femmes Fatales and Cossie and the Disappointments ensembles. They are also organisers of, and performers at, the annual HONK!OZ streetband festival.
The Peace Artistes
And finally, Bradford’s own Peace Artistes – a stunning band “rocking with rhythm and pulsating with passion!” The Peace Artistes have astonished audiences on the streets and at folk, jazz, world music and street band festivals all over Europe and the UK since the 1980s.
The Peace Artistes are the organisers of this first UK HONK! but hope to pass the baton on to another band for a HONK! UK 2026!
The Peace Artistes Street Band 