Like Dvořák, the English composer Frederick Delius was also influenced strongly by his exposure to American slave songs and the new, developing concert spirituals tradition. However, while Dvořák’s immersion in American culture came at the end of an already established career, Delius began his fascination with African American music at the young age of 22, when he was sent to Florida by his father, to manage an orange grove that was owned by the family. Ironically, Delius’ father believed that the assignment in Florida would help distract his son from a desire for a musical career. What happened, of course, was just the opposite. As he listened to the beautiful singing of Black plantation workers, Delius found himself so inspired that he became even more determined to develop his own musical abilities. He later wrote that “hearing the Afro-Americans singing in such romantic surroundings, it was then I first felt the urge to express myself in music."

Many of Delius’ compositions show the clear influence of his early Florida experience. In his own words, he felt an admiration for the way in which the Black plantation singers evidenced “a truly wonderful sense of musicianship and harmonic resource in the instinctive way in which they treated a melody . . .”

Included in the works that expressed the influence of these admired Black singers was Delius’ Florida Suite, an orchestral work completed a year after his stay in Florida; the opera Koanga; and the tone poem Appalachia, which Delius called “Variations of an Old Slave Song with Final Chorus,” because it incorporates an original slave melody.