The Spirituals Project
The mission of the project is to preserve and revitalize the music and teachings of the sacred songs — and cultural treasures — called “Spirituals,” created and first sung by enslaved Africans in America in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Spirituals Project is a Community Organization dedicated to preserving and revitalizing the spirituals, through musical, educational, and social justice work in our community. Programs of The Spirituals Project include musical performance, education and research, into the multi-layered history and impact of the spirituals tradition.
The Spirituals Project was founded in December 1998 by Dr. Arthur C. Jones
But the organization has its roots in activities that date back more than seven years earlier. Beginning in early 1991, Dr. Jones and accompanist Ingrid Hansen Thompson began to conduct a series of concert, lecture and workshop programs on the songs created and first sung by African Americans in slavery in the 18th and 19th Centuries. These activities included educational concert, lecture and workshop programs, and the development of an educational public television documentary film. These varied activities provided the background and impetus for the establishment of The Spirituals Project as a formal educational organization.
“Throughout my career — in my teaching, scholarship and community work — I have focused on issues of culture, power, and privilege, with an early specialty in African American and multicultural psychology. My work on the spirituals, begun in the early 1990s, with an expanded interdisciplinary reach, grew naturally from my early work in clinical psychology, as both a practitioner and scholar. I have been inspired by the power of the music and teaching passed on to us through song by my enslaved ancestors, and particularly the lessons these songs offer for building an inclusive, compassionate world. Long before our twentieth and twenty-first century focus on the idea of a "beloved community," women and men in bondage passed on to us a clear blueprint for the building of such a community!”
— Dr. Arthur C. Jones
In 2009, filmmakers Larry Bograd and Coleen Hubbard produced “I Can Tell the World,” a documentary film that follows several members of the Spirituals Project Choir, who relate personal stories of transformation and share their experiences of performance of the spirituals as a way to help heal a nation still wounded by racism.
The Spirituals Project has a rich history.
This includes: performances at the inaugurations of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and Colorado Governor Bill Ritter; performances at the 2008 Democratic National Convention; programs featuring prominent artists such as Bernice Johnson Reagon, Dianne Reeves, Denyce Graves, Take Six, and artists from the hip-hop band Flobots; lecture-concert programs throughout the United States; workshops in schools, churches and many other community venues locally and nationally; and interviews with artists and community leaders throughout the United States who are concerned with preserving the spirituals as an important national cultural treasure. The Spirituals Project is known nationwide for its leadership in the spirituals preservation movement, and was the recipient of the 2010 Denver Mayor's Award for Excellence in the Arts.
Dr. Jones, now an emeritus professor in the division of musicology at the Lamont School of Music, continues to present lectures and workshops locally and nationally, and The Spirituals Project recruits artists, scholars and speakers as part of a pool of resources who can be called on for its multifaceted array of programs.
With the official transition of The Spirituals Project to the University of Denver's Lamont School of Music, the multi-ethnic, intergenerational Spirituals Project Choir presents twice-yearly concerts in the Newman Center's June Swaner Gates Concert Hall and in a variety of community venues, and will continue to present educational programs regionally and nationally. M. Roger Holland, II is the Spirituals Project's faculty director.
For inquiries regarding The Spirituals Project, please contact: Roger.Holland@du.edu
