Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (15 August 1875 – 1 September 1912) was an English composer and conductor who was mixed-race; his father was a Sierra Leone Creole physician. Coleridge-Taylor achieved such success that he was referred to by white New York musicians as the "African Mahler" at the time when he had three tours of the United States in the early 1900s. He was particularly known for his three cantatas based on the epic poem, Song of Hiawatha by American Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Coleridge-Taylor premiered the first section in 1898, when he was 22.

He married an Englishwoman, Jessie Walmisley, and both their children had musical careers. Their son Hiawatha adapted his father's music for a variety of performances. Their daughter Avril Coleridge-Taylor also became a composer-conductor.