The First Published Black Composer Went Into Print In 1551

His name was Vicente Lusitano, he was son of a Portuguese father and African mother, he worked in Italy and (later) Germany, and his first book of motets contains daring chromaticism and dissonances that precede Gesualdo by decades. His place in European music history was obscured not (or not only) by racism: it was a case of sharp aesthetic disagreement with, and professional enmity from, an influential colleague. – Van