In this article, the author features the life and works of Antonin Dvorak, a Czech classical musician. In the throes of a New World epiphany, Dvorak has espoused a future for American music based on "negro melodies." For three years, beginning in the fall of 1892, Dvorak found himself embroiled in a sustained and often bitter debate over issues of race and national identity that pitted against each other the two cities in which American classical music was born. In Boston, he was denounced as "negrophile" while he was embraced as a mentor of genius in New York. Dvorak, a self-made butcher's son, was appointed by educational visionary Jeannette Thurber to direct the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Enticed by a salary he could not refuse, Dvorak started to show Americans "the promised land and kingdom of a new and independent art, in short, to create national music." Dvorak was responsible for pushing for a broad understanding of music in America--the music sources, its audience, and its relationship to culture and society.