Originally composed for piano as the final movement of "African Suite," Danse begins with two introductory chords followed by energetic swinging rhythms and repeated angular melodies. Students will love the moods in this festive overture, evocative of later Broadway musicals. The artistic turning point of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's career happened in his twenties when he met the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dunbar influenced the young composer to concentrate on his African heritage. Born in suburban London to Alice Martin, an Englishwoman and the daughter of a blacksmith, his father, Dr. Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, was a Creole of Sierra Leone who qualified as a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS) and returned to Africa before his son's birth. Called Coleridge by his family, he was raised in Croydon, Surrey, by his mother and her father, Benjamin Holmans, who taught him the violin. (3:00)
