ALLENTOWN, Pa. – More than 40 cultures were represented at this year\u2019s annual Culture fest, bringing together live music, dozens of vendors, cultural performances, sports and other activities.<\/p>\n
The festival celebrates culture, diversity and community. Founder Michelle Zattoni said the event has a personal meaning for her.<\/p>\n
Zattoni founded Culture fest in 2018, the same year her sister, Brenda Zattoni, passed away. “That was actually the year that my sister passed. And at first I took it hard, but I ultimately wanted to give the community what she gave me, which was lessons in cultural diversity, community love and acceptance.”<\/p>\n
The festival included several forms of cultural expression, including Indian dancing, belly dancing, spoken word and mime.<\/p>\n
Culture Fest was held for the second year at Cedar Beach. One of the major attractions was a basketball tournament featuring 10 teams.<\/p>\n
“Definitely see a diverse culture. That’s a great part of this Culture fest. We have different teams and different cultures and everything going on.” said Michael Pina, the basketball tournament organizer.<\/p>\n
Visitors also could dance, play in the sand and browse vendors, including Barry McCue, owner of Bear Box Guitars. McCue showcased one-of-a-kind guitars at the festival.<\/p>\n
For Zattoni, the festival is about more than music, food, sports and entertainment. She said it is an opportunity for people from different backgrounds to come together.<\/p>\n
“I just love to be able to see all the people celebrating each other and really coming together without bias.” Zattoni said organizers hope to expand Culture fest into a two-day event in Allentown next year if the festival gains enough support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – More than 40 cultures were represented at this year\u2019s annual Culture fest, bringing together live…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,232,153,155,154],"class_list":["post-270486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown-area","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}