Musical Reflections: Building Community through Questioning
On Family Weekend 2025, the Holy Cross College Choir and Chamber Singers performed their annual Fall Concert, which took place on All Saints Day in the St. Joseph Memorial Chapel. As a member of both choirs and a music major in the class of 2026, this Fall Concert felt especially poignant. I had the wonderful opportunity to perform with friends old and new, under the direction of a dear mentor, and in a space which holds so many precious memories of my time here at Holy Cross. We performed pieces ranging from Benjamin Britten’s 12-minute a cappella piece “Hymn to Saint Cecilia,” to Albert E. Brumley’s joyously bluegrass “I’ll Fly Away,” to a gorgeously poetic and reflective iteration of “And I Saw A New Heaven” by Eric Nelson. It was my last concert here during the season of autumn, and thus felt especially sacred against the backdrop of New England fall foliage.
Leading up to this concert, rehearsals for both College Choir and Chamber Singers (the latter being a smaller, audition based choral group on campus), each took place twice a week from the beginning of the semester. Choir rehearsals are spaces of joy and release, of dedication and growth. At their best, College Choir and Chamber Singers each serve as a safe and fun atmosphere where students and faculty alike can expect musical engagement, mutual respect, and personal fulfillment. This warmth and supportiveness among singers becomes especially important in the week leading up to a performance such as the Fall concert, in which increased rehearsal times and logistical complexities invariably create some stress within the ensembles. This strong community of people who care about one another as much as they care about the art they’re making is something truly irreplaceable. Its preciousness, however, by no means entails that it is perfect.
Across the college, Holy Cross continually contends with issues and questions surrounding its status as a predominantly white institution (PWI). Within the Music Department in particular, the lack of racial diversity among students complicates our classroom and performance spaces as we aim to discuss and even prepare historically “non-white” music to be performed. For example, in this year’s Fall Concert, the College Choir performed an African American spiritual called “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” by Harry Thacker Burleigh. Known primarily for “Deep River,” Burleigh is often regarded as the first major Black composer, arranger, and musician to arise within American classical music. His transcription and composition of spirituals has helped cement Black expression amidst enslavement through song as an integral fixture in American history. When it comes to performing such music as a predominantly white choir, any presumptions about the sufficiency of our good intent must be critically engaged with. Among the choral community at Holy Cross, multiple questions remain, “How can we do better? Is it ever within the right of a predominantly or all-white choir to perform African American spiritual music? If not, what are the alternatives? If yes, then how exactly should we go about it?” Needless to say, the sharing of culture and history through music, while a joyous opportunity, is one to be taken seriously.
Leading up to our performance of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” members of the College Choir were encouraged to read a few pieces of academic literature on these very questions, in order to facilitate a small group discussion during rehearsal. The pieces provided to us largely supported the claim that choral ensembles lacking racial diversity should not let their demographic shortcomings stop them from performing African-American spirituals, so long as they make sure to approach such music with the dignity and care it deserves. To this end, Professor of Practice and Director of Choirs Katie Gardiner expresses the necessity for students to first and foremost understand the history of Black minstrelsy and the generational hurt it has enacted for Black Americans, in order to properly proceed with learning and performing this music. She also notes the distinction between spirituals that contain more universally resonant themes of belonging, aspiration, and resilience, compared to those which explore specific experiences of enslavement exclusive to Black American heritage. To say the least, a group of white students expressing the experience of being on an auction block has very different implications than them singing about awaiting a heavenly chariot to “carry them home.”
Acknowledging this, scholars such as Lourin Plant argue that the performance of spirituals by predominantly white, Black, and mixed ensembles alike are all integral to the preservation and sharing of Black American tradition and heritage along with broader reconciliatory aims. Citing the “historic foretelling” of Black intellectuals, activists, and artists such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, and even H.T. Burleigh himself, Plant asserts that “musical arts… [can and should] be an important forum for our racial reflection, and the African-American spiritual, even in the shadow of blackface minstrelsy, could be its matrix.” Similarly, Anton Armstrong affirms that African American spirituals comprise the music “of a proud and noble people… [and] which celebrates life and the power of goodness over the power of evil…. [it] does and should serve as an inspiration [and education] for all generations,” of varying racial identities.
While working on “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” Professor Gardiner continually highlighted this approach to the learning and performing of spirituals, asking students to lean into a sense of responsibility rather than self-centered fear. Following the compositional intentions of H.T. Burleigh, Gardiner encouraged singers to recognize their position as guests within this musical tradition, and also embrace the emotions and sensibilities which the song might imply for them personally. In effect, the practicalities of rehearsing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” was no different than those of our other concert pieces. Nonetheless, I did feel a subtle but distinctive reverence and intentionality among the ensemble while rehearsing and performing this spiritual, especially as it was the closing piece of the concert.
Making an informed and intentional choice to bring African American spirituals to campus through performance can help our Holy Cross community more fully reckon with its complex legacy of racism and inequity, especially as a Jesuit institution. As Lourin Plant puts so powerfully, “The path to understanding [this] legacy passes through our shared joys, pains, and sorrows, not by painfully forgetting or fearfully ignoring them. Learning to love, teach, and especially to sing… spirituals brings us closer to humbly reconciling the truth of what we are, together,” as much in all our differences as in all our similarities. In order to ensure the presence of social equity and justice within the musical sphere, we as enjoyers and students of music must be willing to practice what we preach and work through the challenges of sharing complex cultural history—precisely through the process of sharing music.