Louis Moreau Gottschalk was born in New Orleans on 8 May 1829 to Edward Gottschalk and Aimée Marie Bruslé, one of seven children, five of them half-siblings by his father’s biracial mistress. His maternal grandmother and his nurse Sally were both Saint-Dominican Creoles, and he grew up hearing a mixture of traditions; he played the piano from an early age and made an informal debut at the new St. Charles Hotel in 1840. At thirteen he sailed for Europe, since a classical training was needed for what he intended, and the Paris Conservatoire rejected his application unheard on grounds of nationality — Pierre Zimmerman, head of the piano faculty, observing that America was a country of steam engines. He got in by other doors, through family friends. He returned to the United States in 1853 and died on 18 December 1869.

Bamboula (Danse des Nègres) and La Savane established him as an American composer rather than an imitator of European models: they carry the music of enslaved Africans into a Romantic frame, and stand as the first Louisiana Creole material in classical music. After a Salle Pleyel concert Chopin told him to give him his hand, predicting he would become the king of pianists, and Liszt and Alkan recognised him too. From a stay in Cuba in 1854 he made repeated journeys through the Caribbean and Central and South America; Souvenir de Porto Rico: Marche des gibaros, Op. 31, probably written in 1857, takes its march theme from what he heard among the Puerto Rican jíbaros. He spent most of his working life outside the United States.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Moreau_Gottschalk
• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q550701