It was great to see so many people from Pittsburgh’s international community gathered in one place for the 51st annual Pittsburgh Folk Festival on Memorial Day Weekend. I’m often complaining about Pittsburgh’s lack of public space—spaces where strangers from different communities and walks of life can meet and mingle--but at $8.00 a ticket for the whole weekend, this festival came close to fulfilling the definition.
Representatives from Pittsburgh’s more recent Filipino, Turkish, Chinese, and Indian communities as well as longer-in “Americans” of Irish, Scottish, Italian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Carpatho-Rusyn, and Lebanese descent, and many other cultures and heritages (though notably, almost no one representing Africa--I saw one "Ghana" jewelry stand) celebrated their homelands in terms of dance, costume, cuisine, cultural displays, and arts and crafts. The food was delicious, the costumes were spectacular, the marketplace (including jewelry, pottery, books, fabric, clothes) was hard to resist, the dancing was of varying talent, but the good dancing was impressive, and a treat to watch.
From the top down, the photos above represent dancers in the style of: Bulgaria, China, Slovakia, Slovakia, and Lithuania.
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