Each May Asian American communities unite in Iowa to celebrate Asian Pacific Heritage Month during a daylong festival known as CelebrAsian: The Asian Heritage Festival. Join the celebrAsian this year on Saturday, May 16, 2009, at the Iowa State Capitol, East Campus, in Des Moines, Iowa from 10 am to 8 pm. Since its inception seven years ago, CelebrAsian: The Annual Asian Heritage Festival has steadily become one of the year’s most anticipated events. It brings together people across the Midwest to experience Asia in Iowa. (Sweet!!! Midwest Asian American represent!!)

CelebrAsian is the largest Asian American event in Iowa, showcasing cultural exhibits, history, food, performance artists, sports, martial arts, children’s activities, and other family-friendly activities. CelebrAsian is organized around distinct Asian “villages,” representing twelve distinct Asian communities that live in Iowa. Villages include: Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Hmong, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Laos, Nepalese, Taidam, Vietnamese, and Thai. Each village showcases the food, culture, history, arts, and crafts indigenous to their culture.

You can see a list of performances here. The headlining act is Legaci, a Filipino boy band out of the San Francisco Bay Area. If you want to request a song for them to sing, you can make request by calling Legaci at (510) 648-3832. Also check out their MySpace page here. (FYI – For the 2008 celebrasian, Tatum Jones and Magnetic North performed.)

Legaci singing “cupid” by 112