Flickr.com:
He called himself an Anglo-African and fought against race prejudice all his short life. He incorporated black traditional music with concert music, with such compositions as African Suite, African Romances and Twenty Four Negro Melodies. The first performance of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast was described by the principal of the Royal College of Music as 'one of the most remarkable events in modern English musical history', and this work was acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic.
And yet, the works of this talented composer are now out of fashion; little of his music is available in printed form. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is today all but forgotten in the country of his birth. He was born in Holborn, London on 15th August 1875. His father, Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, came from Sierra Leone to Britain in the 1860s, studied medicine, qualified as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, practiced in Croydon, went back to Africa, was appointed coroner of the Gambia in 1894. [Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is profiled at AfriClassical.com, where 8 brief audio samples of his music can be heard.] Full Post
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Afro-British Composer
Afro-British Conductor
Flickr Photo of Black Composer
Hiawatha's Wedding Feast
Composer of African Descent
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