Overview

We welcome you to the Starwood Festival; a celebration of diversity and alternatives in belief systems, lifestyles, and spirituality. Here you will never find a struggle to define which truth is the "real" truth, but rather a community of explorers fresh from their many journeys through realms both alien and familiar, flush with discovery, eager to share the wisdom they have found. Here are the children of the quest, their vision neither obscured by the forest nor are their minds diverted by the numbering trees, but peering upward and outward in wonder, beyond the night sky to the distant stars themselves.

The Starwood Festival features over 15 performances of music, drumming, dance and theatre. Its a multiversity featuring over 150 classes, workshops and ceremonies offered by teachers from many fields, disciplines, traditions and cultures. It's a family-friendly camping event with tenting and hiking, a pool and a hot-tub, a food court, co-op child care, a Kid Village and multimedia shows. Starwood is also a social event with costume parades, jam sessions, merchants, parties, all-night drumming and much more, including the blossom of our fest: our huge and infamous Bonfire!

Be prepared to witness history in the making, as Starwood, the event that hosted the last appearance of Merl Saunders & the Rainforest Band, hosts the re-launch of The Rainforest Band in a tribute to Merl Saunders and Jerry Garcia! See the Entertainment page for more info.

Also, be there for the debut of Sikiru Adepoju and Heart Beat! Grammy award winner Sikiru Adepoju, the man Mickey Hart calls “the Mozart of the talking drum”, combines the efforts of Steel-Pan artist Douglas “Val” Serrant, guitarist Peter Fujii, and other great musicians to form this World Music/Fusion group in the tradition of Planet Drum. Raquy and the Cavemen will also be there, and The JiMiller Band, Odd’s Bodkin, Alex Bevan, and more! See the Entertainment page for more info.

We also have some amazing speakers to tell you about. We welcome biographer and underground comic writer Harvey Pekar, star of his own series American Splendor. Fantasy novelist and priestess Diana L. Paxson returns, and Egyptian composer Halim El-Dabh, and we welcome Dr. Daniel Kriegman, co-founder of the open-source spirituality project Yoism. Plus authors Isaac Bonewits, Rev. “Skip” Ellison, Tony Mierzwicki Philip H. Farber, Ian Corrigan, and the irreverent SubGenius Rev. Ivan Stang!

And for the kids, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart will organize a four-day series of elemental workshops, leading to a certificate from the Grey School of Wizardry. Sikiru Adepoju and Val Serrant will lead a percussion class for kids, and there will be a Kids Concert on Saturday featuring some of our headline performers, followed by the traditional Waking Dream Puppet Parade. This has got to be the most exciting Starwood program ever!