Hoodoo Heritage Festival

A celebration of African American folklore, history, music, art, scholarship, and community. The Hoodoo Heritage Festival returns to Nashville on Saturday, October 24, 2026, for a full day of Black Southern spirituality, scholarship, music, movement, art, ancestral remembrance, and community. Founded in 2022, the Hoodoo Heritage Festival creates space in Tennessee for Hoodoo to be honored, preserved, and celebrated by the community it comes from. Hoodoo is more than spells and spiritual products. It is a living African American tradition shaped by survival, creativity, faith, resistance, and ancestral knowledge. FEATURED FESTIVAL EXPERIENCES • Special guest scholars and cultural experts • Conjuring the Blues: Hoodoo, Sinners, and Black Southern Folklife panel • Educational workshops throughout the day • Live music, dance, poetry, burlesque, and cultural performances • Sound & Spirit guided meditation and sound experience • Community Ancestor Altar facilitated by Gathering of Goddesses • MinTea meet-and-greet and interactive tea-making class • Local authors, artists, makers, and spiritual vendors • Food, fellowship, cultural installations, and community connection FEATURED GUESTS Meet acclaimed Hoodoo scholar and author Dr. Yvonne P. Chireau, official Hoodoo consultant for Sinners; Smithsonian curator Dr. Brittany Levingston; cultural anthropologist, author, and museum founder Tony Kail, M.A.; and additional educators, artists, instructors, and culture bearers. WORKSHOPS AND CLASSES Festival workshops explore Hoodoo and the blues, pleasure-centered manifestation, intentional crochet, water spirituality, tea-making, ancestral traditions, and more. COMMUNITY ANCESTOR ALTAR Guests may bring photographs, candles, cigars, fruit, flowers, or other small offerings to add to the community altar. Please take personal items home. Remaining offerings will be respectfully cleared after the festival. WHO SHOULD ATTEND? Whether you are deeply rooted in the tradition, beginning to learn about your heritage, or supporting Black cultural preservation, the Hoodoo Heritage Festival offers an opportunity to learn, celebrate, reconnect, and experience Hoodoo as a living tradition. COMMUNITY RESPECT This is a culturally specific event centered on Hoodoo as an African American spiritual tradition created and preserved by the descendants of enslaved Black people in the United States. Guests are expected to respect the community, its elders, its ancestors, and the closed nature of the tradition. Saturday, October 24, 2026 11:00 AM to 11:00 PM 635 W. Old Hickory Boulevard Madison, Tennessee Come honor the roots, celebrate the culture, and help preserve Hoodoo for future generations.