Jamaica’s sacred heartbeat

At a hillside gathering in Watt Town, Jamaica, drums, prayer, and song converge in a living tradition that reaches beyond the island and across the generations to Africa.

Kirt Henry is part of the community of revivalists who worked to secure Unesco recognition for a practice long misunderstood and marginalised. In this intimate journey into Jamaican Spiritualism, scholar and practitioner, Kirt, reflects on faith shaped by memory, resilience, and ancestral connection.
Through stories of healing, trance, ritual clothing and the sacred language of the body, Heart and Soul explores a spiritual world where the boundaries between the earthly and the unseen are fluid. Revivalism emerges, not as a relic of the past, but as a way of life – one that carries the weight of colonial trauma while offering belonging, continuity and hope.

Set against the rhythms of worship at Watt Town, the programme asks what it means to inherit a faith, to preserve a tradition, and to find identity in practices once dismissed as superstition. It is a story of survival and recognition, where the journey to Unesco status becomes part of the wider conversation about Jamaica’s African heritage, spiritual sovereignty, and the enduring power of community.

Presenter: Nick Davis
Producer: Matt O'Donoghue
Series Producer: Rajeev Gupta
Editor: Chloe Walker
Production Coordinator: Mica Nepomuceno

(Photo: Revivalist bandsman at Watt Town Pilgrimage, 2026. Credit: Matt O'Donoghue)