Live music and dancing. Entertaining and educational speakers. Vendors selling intriguing wares. And some of the tastiest and healthiest raw food in the city. These ingredients make up the Wonderful Wizards of Raw, a raw food extravaganza held the first weekend of June, now in its 10th year. 

Hosted by Tassili’s Raw Reality Café, a raw food restaurant in the West End, the celebratory festival has educated and satiated curious minds and hungry stomachs with 100 percent raw food and vegan foods. A top priority for Tassili Ma’at, the event’s creator and founder/owner of the café, was to spotlight raw food chefs and educate the public on the health benefits of their cuisine. 

“The festival came about from my desire to create a fun and safe place for raw and aspiring raw food chefs to show their talents, their gifts for food,” says Ma’at. Attendees can sample foods from the chefs and learn about their techniques. Ma’at also invites herbalists and health care providers to come as attendees, vendors or speakers. 

Over the years, the event has grown from a single day to a sprawling four-day festival. For the past seven years, Ma’at has kicked off the festivities with a gathering called “The Libation” on the first Friday of June. Held at the Cascade Nature Preserve waterfall, it features singing, dancing and a special focus on what is meaningful. 

“The Libation is about giving thanks,” says Ma’at, clarifying that it has nothing to do with the connotation of consuming alcohol. “We’re choosing the spirits we want to work with. We don’t want to work with random energy. We want to call forth those who honor Earth, those who have honored us, those who’ve gone before us, those who have left a legacy of health and well-being on the planet,” says Ma’at. The goal, she says, is to have that energy carry over into the festival itself.

Those who have attended the Libation in the past say that it has been overwhelmingly successful at doing just that. “I felt like I was floating,” says Nyemay Aya, a Wonderful Wizards of Raw vendor and Libation attendee. “I felt a real spiritual connection with nature and the ancestors,” says Aya. “It was tranquil.” 

People from all walks of life are welcomed to and attend the festival. Surya Peterson, who has driven in from Tuskegee, Alabama, to attend the festival for the past two years, noticed something unique right from the beginning. “There are not only the food vendors, but the complete community is in attendance. The children and the adults, as well as the craftsmen, artists, booksellers and other vendors,” says Peterson.

What keeps Peterson coming back, traveling all the way from Alabama? “To see the people and see how it’s growing and to interact with people on the same path that I’m on, if you will,” he says. “And to see the children and just to see how great the growth is,” he adds. 

The festival hosts a friendly raw food competition every year, with chefs pitting their top recipes against each other. 

Larese Dockery, the owner of IAMOH Herbal, won the competition two years ago with an aphrodisiac—the theme for that year—sea moss gel seasoned with damiana, horny goat weed and cacao mix, among others. 

Dockery brings her herbal business to many different festivals and events but describes Wonderful Wizards of Raw as having a particularly strong cultural flavor. “This festival is more African American-centered and focuses on education, heritage and food,” says Dockery. “Whereas many of the other events are more mixed, where there really wasn’t the education, there really wasn’t the knowledge or the educational speakers they have.” 

This year, Ma’at is doubling down on the educational side of the festival. The fourth day of the festival, which Ma’at calls the “Indaba,” a Southern African term meaning “discussion,” is dedicated to a sit-down conversation with event speakers Queen Afua and Makeda Dread, two African American icons of modern-day holistic health movements. Attendees can purchase tickets to the Indaba and sit down in conversation with the speakers. Ma’at’s goal is to drive personal, intimate conversation around personal health and wellness.

Ma’at says she is proud of how the event has grown over the years. Not only has the number of days increased, but attendance has risen from a few hundred the first year to an estimated 1,500 last year. The number of chef stalls has increased from a small handful through the first few years to 12 booths. Ma’at explains they have limited space, but she has chosen to keep the festival in the backyard of Tassili’s Raw Reality to maintain the close-knit, communal feeling of the experience. ❧

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