Carolina Festivals: Spoleto, Seafood, the Okra Strut, Appalachian & More

Have banjo, will pick: Old-time music never got old in the Carolinas. Bluegrass and old-style country music can still be found in spontaneous and regularly scheduled concerts in both states. Here, a pro takes a turn at the Union Grove Music Festival in North Carolina.
Photo courtesy of
N.C. High Country Host, Inc.

Every Memorial Day Weekend in Anderson, SC, come and enjoy one hundred beautiful hot-air balloons, exciting concerts by the nation's top entertainers, fireworks, fabulous food, sponsor displays, amusement rides, and also the US Disc Dog Freedom Weekend Nationals, (Frisbee Dog Contest).
Photo courtesy of
Freedom Weekend Aloft

Carolina Festivals: Spoleto, Seafood, the Okra Strut Appalachian & More

here is no middle ground on the subject of boiled peanuts. Either you love the slippery, salty legumes, or you don’t!

The same is true of okra. Long a staple of Southern cooking, those who travel here from other locales find the green morsels to be tasty – or just plain slimy! Again, there’s just no in-between.

However, whether you like them or you don’t, here in the Carolinas, you can find a party to celebrate their general existence.

That’s something visitors discover very quickly. Give them a theme and Carolinians can find a way to have a party. A word of warning, however: Just because it has the word “festival” in its name doesn’t mean you’ll find anything highbrow on the premises and many of these annual events have been going on for years.

outh Carolina’s Chitlin’ Strut in Salley and Okra Strut in Irmo, or even the North Carolina Seafood Festival, all provide a sense of what to expect. (And it won’t be culture, at least in the white-tie-and-tails sense.)

For those who like a little highbrow now and then, a few standouts are worth a trip on their own. Arguably the most famous and most important is Spoleto Festival USA, held in Charleston, South Carolina, for the past 25 years in May and June. Spoleto offers world premieres in theatre and opera, groundbreaking (and earth-moving) dance, intimate concerts and recitals in magnificent Southern gardens, and artists all over the city.


	Piccolo Spoleto, held at the same time, offers an enormous variety of events held throughout the city.

Indeed, Time magazine reported that during the festival, “the city’s downtown blooms with life; clowns, sidewalk musicians and children fill the streets. It is a relaxed, yet serious approach that marks Spoleto at its best.”

In the mountains of North Carolina, the Appalachian Summer Festival makes July even more rewarding in the Blue Ridge. Held on the Appalachian State University campus, the festival features live performances by such artists as The Paul Taylor Dance Company, Glenn Miller Orchestra, Diamond Rio, and others. This festival has repeatedly been named one of the top 20 events in the Southeast by the Southeast Tourism Society.

Where there is food, music, art, culture and an appreciation for what all those necessities of life do for the soul, there will be festivals to showcase the talent that lives in the Carolinas as well as those remarkable artists who travel here to participate in our many ways of putting on a public party.

Katherine O. Pettit has worked as a writer, magazine editor, printer and public relations consultant. The Columbia resident has published more than 250 articles in magazines and newspapers. Her writing explores a variety of subjects including travel, lifestyles, business and management.

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