"Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is finally enjoying a well-deserved renaissance. His great talent and individuality were directly related to his Anglo-Black heritage, and his imaginative use of African and African American melody and rhythm served as an inspiration for an African American cultural renaissance. African Americans like W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T.

Washington, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Harry Burleigh, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers followed Taylor's lead, feeling that the time was right for them to manifest their cultural heritage. Langston Hughes and other talents associated with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s saw Taylor as a father figure, a role model, and an example of victory over prejudice.".

"During his lifetime, Taylor was world-renowned. Composed when he was only twenty-three, his setting of Longfellow's Hiawatha was just as popular as Handel's Messiah was in Victorian England. Founded in Washington, D.C., with 200 singers, the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society was the first all-black society dedicated to singing not only Taylor's music but also all the "great" musical oratorios.

The composer also enjoyed the patronage of Carl Stoeckel and the Litchfield, Connecticut, Choral Society."--BOOK JACKET.