Musikfest

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Musikfest is a music festival held each August in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The festival begins on the first Friday in August and ends on a Sunday ten days later.

1,000,000 visitors each year make the trip to Bethlehem to participate in this celebration that weaves through a Moravian Community that dates to 1741. These 1,000,000 visitors (100,000 daily) are subject to somewhere between 700 and 1,000 free shows at the festival with one main pay venue each night. Past headlining shows have included REO Speedwagon, Air Supply, Dixie Chicks, George Thorogood, Jethro Tull, Clay Aiken, the Steve Miller Band, Ray Charles, Earth Wind and Fire, Staind, Fuel, The Beach Boys, George Clinton, and in 2006, rock band Alice in Chains played one of their first American shows there, this after the death of Alice in Chains' original lead singer Layne Staley who died in 2004.

Food at the festival represents multiple ethnicities.

Local German roots are a foundation of this celebration of music and each of the several venues' names end in the German word for place, "platz". A popular place for eating and listening to music is the large "Festplatz" that covers 300 dining tables and usually features a polka band.

Musikfest is presented by ArtsQuest, a community-focused nonprofit arts organization founded to "celebrate arts and culture" in the Lehigh Valley and beyond. Proceeds from the event go to the Banana Factory, ArtsQuest's community arts center and gallery located in South Bethlehem, as well as other nonprofit groups in the region.