Voodoo Festival | A Brief History Of How The Biggest Music & Art Festival Started In Louisiana

The Voodoo Music Arts Experience, commonly referred to as Voodoo or Voodoo Fest, is a multi-day music and arts festival held in City Park in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The Voodoo Experience has hosted more than 2000 artists and over one million festival goers during its existence

The festival has been twice nominated for Pollstar’s Music Festival of the Year. It was acquired by Live Nation Entertainment in 2013 and is produced by C3 Presents.

Don Kelly, Voodoo’s former General Counsel, and COO is Festival Director and oversees the event.

The Voodoo Experience is known for including national artists from all genres.

History

Since its 1999 Halloween weekend debut, the annual event has become a Halloween tradition to music fans, both locally and others who travel from around the world. Throughout Voodoo’s 22-year run, more than one million festival-goers have gathered to see performances from about 2,000 artists.

The event has also been twice nominated for Pollstar’s Music Festival of the Year and in 2005, Voodoo founder Stephen Rehage and his team were presented with a key to the city, following the Voodoo 2005 post-Katrina event.

Voodoo’s annual line-up traditionally features top-tier and innovative artists from a variety of musical genres.

Highlights from the last 15 years have included performances from Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Eminem, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Cure, Tiesto, Nine Inch Nails, Deadmau5, No Doubt, Ozzy Osbourne, The Black Keys, Neil Young, Green Day, KISS, Snoop Dogg, Duran Duran, R.E.M. (in one of the band’s last U.S. performances), My Chemical Romance, 50 Cent and 311.

The event was canceled in 2020 because of Coronavirus Virus and it’s not sure if anything will be planned going forward as coronavirus is still very much around.