Multicultural Festival scheduled for Sunday
The fifth annual event will take place from 1 to 5 p.m. in T.R. Gallo Park at the Rondout Creek waterfront.
The fifth annual Kingston Multicultural Festival will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday in T.R. Gallo at the foot of Broadway.
The festival, at the Rondout Creek waterfront, will include ethnic music and dance, multicultural handicrafts, children’s activities, and food and drinks.
Food sold at the festival by local cultural groups will include gyros, tamales, hamburgers, hot dogs, fried fish sandwiches, fried dough, shaved ice, baklava and more. Kosher options of certain foods will be available.
“The fun-packed afternoon will be filled with the sights, sounds and tastes of many cultures that make up our rich community,” Geoff Miller, chairman of the Reher Center for Immigrant Culture and History, which is putting om the festival, said in a press release.
“There will be elaborate costumes, musical instruments, exhibits and entertainment from around the world,” Miller said.
Children activities will include arts and crafts, games, singing and storytelling.
The performance schedule is as follows.
• 1 p.m.: Hellenic Youth Dance Troupe
• 1:25 p.m.: Center for Creative Education Energy Dancers
• 1:50 p.m.: Spirit of Thunderheart (Native American drumming)
• 2:15 p.m.: Klezmer Berl’s Hotsie Totsie Klezmer Orkester (Balkan, Roma-gypsy and klezmer music)
• 2:40 p.m.: Sanjay Natesan (classical Indian drumming)
• 3:05 p.m.: Amadou Diallo (African drumming)
• 3:30 p.m.: Tsvitka (Ukrainian dancing)
• 3:55 p.m.: Bill and Livia Vanaver and Caravan Kids (traditional southern Italian folk dancing)
• 4:20 p.m.: New Progressive Baptist Church
• 4:45 p.m.: Choreo Dance Studio (Irish step dancing)
Other festival participants are to include the A.J. Williams-Myers African Roots Center, the Hudson River Maritime Museum, Humanamente (cultural diversity management), the Jewish Federation of Ulster County, La Voz magazine, the Latino Committee of Kingston, the Mid-Hudson Japanese Community Association, the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America (Branch 95) and the Ulster County Italian-American Foundation.
June is Immigrant Heritage Month, which celebrates Americans’ shared heritage as a nation of immigrants, the press release for the event says.
Organizers of the multicultural festival recommend attendees bring blankets or folding chairs. Seating will be informal.
Parking is available on city streets and behind the Kingston police station on Garraghan Drive.
In the event of rain, the event will be held at the Andy Murphy III Midtown Neighborhood Center at Broadway and Hoffman Street in Midtown Kingston.
The Reher Center is a project of the Jewish Federation of Ulster County that highlights the region’s shared immigrant past while extolling the role immigration plays in shaping the area’s evolving identity.
The center is restoring a centuryold former bakery at Broadway and Spring Street in Kingston’s Rondout district that was owned and operated by a Polish Jewish immigrant, Frank Reher, who sought refuge in America from anti-Semitism in Poland within the Russian Empire.
The Reher family ran the bakery from 1908 until 1980 and continued to live upstairs until 2004, when the last of the bakers, Hymie Reher, died.
For more information about Sunday’s event, go to the “Kingston Multicultural Center” page on Facebook. For more information about the Reher Center, go to rehercenter.org or the center’s Facebook page.