When Madeleine Wright moved to Santa Fe with her husband 10 years ago, she remembers thinking, “There are no Black churches here, but the Black church is in me.”

“I thought people would really enjoy a gospel concert and learning more about Black culture. And that was true,” she said.

Wright founded the Santa Fe Soul Festival in 2018, a volunteer organization with a mission to present and teach African American art, music and dance. Each year, the group organizes a gospel concert that fills most of the St. Francis Auditorium at the New Mexico Museum of Art and uses the proceeds to sponsor free public events throughout the year.

The group has hosted lectures on African American art and music and brought well-known African arts instructors to Santa Fe to teach classes. It has also sponsored Black History Month celebrations and two Juneteenth events.

This year, that involved sponsoring a February luncheon and dance class for the entire student body of the New Mexico School for the Arts — where Wright sits on the board — and co-organizing a free Juneteenth picnic with line dancing and music from a Zimbabwean marimba teacher.

Because of Wright’s work with the Soul Festival, she has been named one of The New Mexican’s 10 Who Made a Difference for 2023.

The Soul Festival’s board has certainly helped Wright, its president, with ideas and logistics, but she’s been the one with the vision who puts events together, friend and fellow board member Aaron Payne said.

“Oh my god, it’s a lot,” another board member, Gregory Ghent, said of the Wright’s work.

She’s “tireless” and, importantly, enjoys the work, Ghent said.

“She brings a sense of energy to board meetings. She makes them fun,” he said. “In doing so, all of the board members like to step up and do things because she doesn’t present it as a burden; she presents it as an opportunity — and you know, you really want to be around people like that.”

She’s the kind of person who laughs often and who will be the first up and dancing in the aisle at a concert, friends said.

Last year, when performers for the Soul Festival’s gospel concert got COVID-19 and could not dance before the show, Wright stepped in.

“She just started dancing on stage, and that set the mood for the whole thing,” Payne said.

As Rev. Harry Ebert — the pastor at First Presbyterian Church, where Wright is an active member — put it: “You’re always glad to see her because you know something good and exciting is going to happen.”

When the church hosted the Soul Festival’s first gospel concert, “I’ve never seen the church so rocking,” he said.

Wright didn’t grow up dancing.

She grew up in Detroit, attended Wayne State University and went on to receive a doctorate in education from the University of Michigan. She then moved near St. Louis when her husband, a doctor during the Vietnam War era, had to serve two years at an Air Force base.

That’s where Wright discovered a university’s low-cost dance program for community members.

At first, and for a long time, she was a clumsy dancer, she said with a smile.

“However, they had live drumming and people playing trombone, and it was so much fun that I just went three times a week,” she said.

It was so much fun, she said, when the couple moved to Houston in the late 1970s, she created a version of the program at Houston Community College, where she taught psychology.

The African Dance Society Wright founded organized summer dance workshops that continue today for African American, African and World Dance students, she said.

Her church in Houston, which had a mission to pass on knowledge about African culture, is also where Wright found many of the mentors who encouraged her to learn about her heritage and make it a part of her life, she said.

“I guess we can say that I’m obsessed with African American culture,” she said. “It grew over my lifetime.”

One example: Since learning more about African culture and different fabrics, she loves to dress in contemporary African clothing — sometimes homemade.

Because there aren’t many organizations in Santa Fe that highlight African American arts and culture, the Soul Festival helps fill the gap and bring awareness to the groups that are here, board members said.

People have come to Soul Festival events not only from places in New Mexico but also have flown in from out of state, “so it’s kind of created a community here,” Payne said.

And although Santa Fe has a small Black population — at about 1.3% of the city’s overall population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — that doesn’t mean people aren’t interested in African American culture, Wright said.

The Soul Festival has grown so easily because Santa Fe is rich with people who want to support cultural experiences, she said: “That’s the nature of the community, and I’ve benefited from it.

“Even though people disagree about so many things, art seems to be something that brings people together,” she continued. “When we’re sharing an experience and learning about each other’s experiences, that brings us closer and enriches our life.

“It’s about sharing part of who you are.”

“Even though people disagree about so many things, art seems to be something that brings people together. When we’re sharing an experience and learning about each other’s experiences, that brings us closer and enriches our life.”

Madeleine Wright