Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. – Musikfest, an annual 10-day music festival held every summer, closed another year last week.
This mostly free event in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania ensures that everyone can enjoy it.
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Musikfest started in 1984, founded by local arts and tourism booster Jeffrey Parks to bring the community together and honor the arts after the closure of Bethlehem Steel.
Bethlehem Steel had been one of the America’s biggest steel companies and the city’s biggest employer. Today, SteelStacks – a performance venue and historic site – stands amid the factory site where workers once produced steel.
The SteelStacks are now one of the venues for Musikfest, which is hosted by one of Pennsylvania’s largest non-profit organizations, ArtsQuest.
ArtsQuest, founded at the same time as Musikfest, works to get more visitors to Bethlehem by making art, music, and educational programs throughout the year.
In the early years of Musikfest, the main stage featured artists primarily from the classic rock, roots rock and older genres, including established artists and bands.
Musikfest now offers music of almost every genre across 16 stages throughout Bethlehem. At least one-third of the performers at this year’s Musikfest were local bands or artists.
Musikfest has a fun tradition of closing out its final night with a fireworks show. They’ve been doing it for 41 years, since the festival’s second year.
Musikfest is split between the two areas of Bethlehem, North Side and South Side. South Side is where the SteelStacks and the main stage, Wind Creek Steel Stage, are. There are four stages in total in South Side.
North Side is the larger area where most of the stages are located, spread throughout Main Street, Bethlehem and a field between Broad Street and the Lehigh Canal. In North Side, there were 10 stages total.
During Musikfest, some of the Bethlehem public buses are used to bring people between the areas easily. This is so that they don’t have to drive their cars between the areas and look for parking every time, and so traffic isn’t terrible.
Spread throughout the areas are hundreds of food trucks and stands. On average, there are 45-60 food vendors, featuring almost every type of cuisine you can imagine. There are poutine trucks, gyro stands, dumpling trucks, s’mores nachos, corn on the cob stands, taco trucks and many more.
Musikfest also has its own stands set up where they offer corndogs, many deep-fried foods, funnel cakes and a lot more.
Some of the biggest bands to play at Musikfest are The Beach Boys in 2003 and 2005 and Maroon 5 in 2011. Train has played throughout the years, including this year on August 3rd.
Third Eye Blind, which performed on August 2, has also played at the festival in the past. The headliner for the first Musikfest was Don McLean, singer of “American Pie.”
Other acts on the main stage this year included “Weird Al” Yankovic, AJR, Grupo Niche, John Mulaney and Bailey Zimmerman.
This year, there were about 500 performances by about 450 artists. The first year of Musikfest had 239 performances, which shows how much it has grown.
Charlie Wallis-Martel is a Reporter with Youth Journalism International.
