The Coal and Coke Heritage Music Festival is scheduled for Saturday, September 27, 2008, from 10 a.m. to dusk. The festival will feature a day-long schedule of musicians and artists, food vendors serving ethnic specialties, visual art displays, and crafts. Festival attendees will become “citizens” of the Coal and Coke Community.

Celebrate The Coal and Coke Heritage!
The Coal and Coke Heritage Music Festival is designed to celebrate the arts and culture indigenous to southwestern Pennsylvania with presentations of visual and performing arts. This event will celebrate the pride and progress of the region and honor the culture, labor and music of the Coal and Coke region in southwestern Pennsylvania.

According to the Coal and Coke Heritage Center, the Connellsville Coke Region runs through parts of Fayette and Westmoreland Counties. In particular, it includes Connellsville, Scottdale, and Uniontown. During the Industrialization period, the steel industry in Pittsburgh boomed and served a critical role in society’s modernization. Through the provision of steel, cities across America built taller and more buildings, longer bridges, bigger ships, motor vehicles, and so much more. According to the Coal and Coke Heritage Center, located at Penn State Fayette, “The center of the steel-making industry was Pittsburgh, and the Connellsville Coke Region supplied Pittsburgh with the coal and coke necessary to make the steel.”

The Coal and Coke Heritage Music festival is not only a celebration of the Connellsville Coke Region, but of its regional and national impact on modern society. It is also a celebration of the culture of the immigrant and migrant miners who settled here in search of a better life for their families. Mining families of the Connellsville Coke Region listened to and performed music of many kinds—from polka to gospel, folk to jazz, the families of the “Patch” provided a virtual juke box of musical entertainment.

This event is multigenerational and multicultural. It is expected the festival will draw thousands of people from the region and nearby states, including the local Fayette County area; Allegheny, Greene, Somerset and Westmoreland Counties; and other areas of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Washington D.C., and West Virginia.