International Village celebrates cultural traditions, food and music
The last day of the festival is today from 3 to 9 p.m.
Music is as much a part of the tradition of McKeesport’s International Village as the food is.
As the second day of the 66th annual ethnic festival continued Wednesday, traveling musicians, Mikey Dee on the accordion and George Batyi on violin, worked their way around vendor booths and visitor tables to entertain.
Mikey Dee has been the entertainment coordinator for the McKeesport International Village for 26 years, but performing at the festival for a decade before entering that role. In his 36 years at International Village, he has played a variety of ethnic and multi-cultural genres. Dee stated that he is mostly known by his Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian and some Polish listeners for his mixture of polka and other ethnic music genres.
“I’m mostly known for the Yugoslavian-based things like Croatian, Serbian and Slovenian. That’s mostly my background, but I play a lot of multicultural things too, German, Irish, Italian, Hungarian, Slovak and Gypsy. You have to do a little bit of everything today if you want to work every day like me,” Dee said.
Dee reflected on the first time he performed at International Village in 1990 with his late grandfather and another performer, where the three musicians strolled throughout the festival all three days. Dee added that this year’s 66th annual festival is the first time since 1991 that strolling entertainment was reintroduced to the festival’s entertainment line up.
“The first time that I performed there was, believe it or not, in 1990 and it was me and my grandfather, my late grandfather, and another guy. We strolled for two hours, all three days, but back then the doors opened at 4 o’clock. So, we strolled from 4 to 6 all three nights, and we also did in 1991,” Dee said. “We strolled the first three nights from 4 to 6. This is the first time they’re having strolling entertainment in the International Village since 1991.”
Dee expressed his appreciation for moving the festival to a new location at Renziehausen Park this year, stating that the festival needed freshened-up and reinvented. Dee stated that the festival’s layout creates more intimacy and encourages more interaction.
This year’s festivities remain at Renziehausen Park, but instead of being held at Stephen Barry Field, the event was spread across Jimmy Long and Schettino fields near the Lions Bandshell. Free admission is being offered this year.
“And the new location is doing that. We had nothing but naysayers leading up to yesterday. But since yesterday, everybody’s loving it. You know, the new location is bigger, it’s more spread out,” Dee said. “People are saying it’s more intimate. It’s great. There’s bigger booths here. I think, logistically, it’s going to work better, probably, than the other place.”
Those in attendance last night were treated to a performance by the Amish Outlaws.
Hezekiah Yoder, one of the lead singers for the band, explained the group’s origin story. Yoder described his family as not entirely conforming to the traditional Amish lifestyle, where he would often sneak out at night and explore neighboring towns, like Reading, Pa., to listen to secular music. After experimenting with his own voice and finding he could sing like his favorite artists.
Yoder described the band as an amalgamation of different artists and genres, from rock and roll to rap and R&B. He added that the band’s main goal is to entertain and get the crowd to have fun and interact with their environment.
International Village will end tonight, with main stage performances by Pravi Rojaki at 6 p.m., Pittsburgh Slovakians at 6:30 p.m., FAAP Philippines at 7 p.m., Lajkoniki Polish Dancers at 7:30 p.m. and Alpen Schuplattlers at 8 p.m. Polka with Mikey Dee Band will be playing from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. as part of the nightly polka dancing tradition.
