The Spirituals Project
M. Roger Holland II, Director
The Spirituals Project is a Community Organization
dedicated to preserving and revitalizing the spirituals, through musical, educational, and social justice work in our community. Our work centers around a community choir open to all.
Our Mission
is to preserve and revitalize the music and teachings of the sacred songs called “spirituals,” created and first sung by enslaved Africans in America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Spirituals uplift in times of crisis, heal, comfort, inspire and instill hopes and dreams, thereby transforming individuals, communities, and whole societies. Our goal is to ensure that the spirituals will be passed on for many generations to come.
Awards, Events & Special Performances
A past recipient of the Denver Mayor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, the organization has presented a wide variety of musical and educational programs over the years, including a national conference on spirituals in 2013 featuring poet Nikki Giovanni as keynote speaker, and a historic concert in 2009 at Denver’s Ellie Caulkins Opera House in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 80th birthday featuring the renowned mezzo soprano Denyce Graves as guest artist. In the fall of 2018 the choir returned to the Ellie Caulkins Opera House to perform with international opera star Kathleen Battle.
Join Us!
We welcome people of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities to join our community choir. You do not need to be able to read music or have had any formal musical training to participate in The Spirituals Project Choir. Please join us. For more information about the organization, or to audition and join the choir, please email The Spirituals Project Director, M. Roger Holland at roger.holland@du.edu.
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Spiritual Composition Commission
The Spirituals Project seeks to commission a modern-day Spiritual, one that captures the contemporary struggles of those seeking justice and freedom from discrimination and oppression, especially African Americans. The modern-day Spiritual will be composed of a melody that is easy to sing by the average person and lends itself to group participation. It will most likely be strophic in nature (composed of multiple verses), capable of being led by a song leader and not a soloist, with original lyrics that inspire and foster community, collective identity, and societal change. The piece we are commissioning is intended for community singing and not a choral work.
Award: $7,500, remitted to the selected composer upon submission of the completed work. The selected composition will also have the opportunity to be published by GIA Publications, Inc. in its In Spirit and Truth octavo series. The selected submission will be performed by The Spirituals Project Choir along with an audience at the conclusion of our national conference to be held at the University of Denver on Saturday, May 16, 2026. A travel stipend to cover hotel and airfare will be provided if the composer is able to attend the premier.
Submission Instructions: All submissions should be emailed to the committee at Lamont.Spirituals@du.edu with the subject line, “Spirituals Commission.” Submissions should contain a written score of the composition and cover letter with contact information. A recording of the work is not required but may be included if so desired. Please submit scores as PDF files and optional recordings as mp3 files.
Judging: Submissions will be reviewed by the director of TSP along with selected Lamont School of Music faculty.
Important dates:
- January 1, 2026 – Submission deadline.
- February 1, 2026 – Notice will be made to the winner, followed by public announcement.
- May 16, 2026 – Performance of the winning composition at The Spirituals Project Choir’s Spring Concert that concludes its National Conference on Spirituals, sung by choir and audience.
Please contact M. Roger Holland, director of The Spirituals Project, at roger.holland@du.edu with any questions.
Background
The Negro Spiritual was used to inspire and invigorate an oppressed people during the period of slavery in the United States. First sung by enslaved Africans in the 18th and 19th centuries, these songs affirmed the humanity of the enslaved and were used to resist oppression. In the mid-twentieth century, the Spirituals became foundational to the Freedom Songs that were sung during the Civil Rights Movement. They were adopted and transformed, often naming the obstacles to freedom particular to that time, whether instruments of abuse such as fire hoses or threat of the jail house, or individuals such as Police Chief Pritchett of Albany, Georgia and Bull Connor, Commissioner of Public Safety in Birmingham, Alabama.
Spirituals and the Freedom Songs they inspired were communal and participatory, inspiring the people to fight for freedom and justice—even helping them enact new societal models. Often led by a song leader, their simple melodies and repetitive lyrics, many times strophic in nature, helped people easily participate in their singing—in churches, outdoor marches, sit-ins, and other community spaces. As circumstances changed, singers altered lyrics to address specific challenges and contexts. These songs are regarded as historical documents, conveying the struggles, hopes, imaginations and triumphs of the communities of the times in which they were sung.
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The original Spirituals Project LogoThe Spirituals Project was formally incorporated in December 1998, but the organization has its roots in activities that date back more than seven years earlier. These activities included educational concerts, 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, founded by Dr. Arthur C. Jones, former Clinical Professor of Culture and Psychology and Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence at Colorado Women's College at the University of Denver.
The Fisk Jubilee Singers
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The Spirituals Project’s Founder, Arthur C. Jones
The Spirituals Project’s Director, M. Roger Holland, II
The Spirituals Project Faculty Affiliate, Aleysia K. Whitmore
The Spirituals Project Choir
The Spirituals Project Choir
Leadership
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Arthur C. Jones, Founder
Arthur C. Jones, founder of The Spirituals Project, joined the Lamont faculty in 2016 after serving as chair of the Spirituals Project board, as a clinical professor in the university's Psychology Department for 18 years and subsequently as a clinical professor and associate dean at DU's Colorado Women's College for seven years He has presented solo concerts, lectures and workshops on spirituals throughout the United States and he is the author of the award-winning book, Wade in the Water: The Wisdom of the Spirituals. An expanded, 30th anniversary edition of Wade in the Water is scheduled for publication by Orbis Books in 2023.
Dr. Jones retired from full-time teaching in 2019 and was appointed to serve the university for a year as interim vice chancellor for diversity, equity and inclusion. He is currently professor emeritus of music, culture and psychology, and he remains active with The Spirituals Project as a collaborator on various initiatives and as a tenor in The Spirituals Project Choir. Visit Art's Portfolio Page.
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M. Roger Holland, II, Director
M. Roger Holland, II is a Teaching Assistant Professor in Music and Religion and Director of The Spirituals Project at the Lamont School of Music, University of Denver. A graduate of Union Theological Seminary in New York City where he received the Master of Divinity degree, Roger also served as Artist-in-Residence and director of the Union Gospel Choir for over 13 years. In 2015 Union awarded him the Trailblazers Distinguished Alumni Award, the first given to a graduate whose ministry is music, for his contributions to the legacy of African American music. He received a Master's Degree in Piano Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, also in New York, and completed his undergraduate work at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey where he majored in Music Education with a concentration in piano and voice.
Roger is the newly appointed editor of the In Spirit and Truth series published by GIA Publications, Inc., which reflects the aesthetic of Black Catholic worship. Commissioned works include The Dream and The Dreamer, The Tribulation Suite, and The Call. Original music collections published by GIA include “Building Up the Kingdom,” featuring the single “Worthy God,” and his recent collection, “Honey from the Rock, Vol. 1-4” He has played for the Broadway productions of Oprah Winfrey’s The Color Purple and the Tony award winning show, Memphis. In November 2016 Timothy Cardinal Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York presented Roger with the Pierre Toussaint Medallion for service. Visit Roger's Faculty Bio.
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Aleysia K. Whitmore, Faculty Affiliate
Aleysia is an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and the Faculty Affiliate for The Spirituals Project at the Lamont School of Music, University of Denver. Her research focuses on community music making, cultural policy, the world music industry, and globalization. Her book, World Music and the Black Atlantic (Oxford University Press 2020), analyzes how musicians, industry actors, and audiences create, promote, and consume West African and Cuban musics in the world music industry. Her current book project, Sounds of a Porte Ouverte, examines how cultural policies engage with cultural diversity in southeastern France. She is currently conducting research on community music making and social justice in Denver. She was most recently a EURIAS research fellow at Aix-Marseille Université’s IMéRA Research Institute. She has also taught popular music, world music, and classical music courses at Brown University, Boston College, the University of Miami, and the University of Colorado Denver. She holds a BMus from the University of Toronto and AM and PhD degrees in ethnomusicology from Brown University. Visit Aleysia's Faculty Bio.
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