Louis Farrakhan is an American religious leader who has been the head of the Nation of Islam since 1981, a new religious movement which combines black nationalism and Islamic terminology. Prior to the Nation of Islam, Farrakhan was a calypso singer who used the stage name Calypso Gene from 1950 to 1955 and a violinist from 1939 to 1955. The longest-serving Nation of Islam leader, he also served as minister of several mosques in Boston and Harlem in the 1950s under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad.