🔗 Share this article

The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always bore the weight of her father’s reputation. As the offspring of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the prominent UK musicians of the early 20th century, her identity was enveloped in the lingering obscurity of the past.

An Inaugural Recording

Not long ago, I sat with these shadows as I prepared to make the world premiere recording of Avril’s 1936 piano concerto. Featuring impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will grant new listeners fascinating insight into how this artist – an artist in conflict originating from the early 1900s – conceived of her world as a artist with mixed heritage.

Legacy and Reality

Yet about the past. One needs patience to adjust, to see shapes as they really are, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I felt hesitant to address Avril’s past for some time.

I had so wanted Avril to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, that held. The rustic British sounds of parental inspiration can be observed in several pieces, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only review the names of her family’s music to realize how he viewed himself as not only a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition as well as a voice of the African heritage.

This was where parent and child began to differ.

White America evaluated Samuel by the brilliance of his music instead of the colour of his skin.

Family Background

As a student at the renowned institution, Samuel – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a British mother – turned toward his African roots. At the time the poet of color this literary figure came to London in 1897, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He adapted Dunbar’s African Romances into music and the next year used the poet’s words for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an international hit, notably for African Americans who felt indirect honor as American society judged Samuel by the quality of his art rather than the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success did not temper his beliefs. During that period, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in England where he met the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and saw a range of talks, such as the subjugation of African people in South Africa. He remained an advocate until the end. He sustained relationships with early civil rights leaders including this intellectual and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt during an invitation to the presidential residence in the early 1900s. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he established his reputation so notably as a musician that it will long be remembered.” He died in the early 20th century, aged 37. Yet how might the composer have made of his offspring’s move to travel to the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the African American magazine Jet magazine. The system “struck me as the right policy”, Avril told Jet. Upon further questioning, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with this policy “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, guided by benevolent South Africans of all races”. Were the composer more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or born in the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about apartheid. But life had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I hold a UK passport,” she remarked, “and the government agents never asked me about my background.” So, with her “fair” complexion (as Jet put it), she moved within European circles, lifted by their praise for her deceased parent. She gave a talk about her father’s music at the University of Cape Town and directed the broadcasting ensemble in that location, programming the inspiring part of her Piano Concerto, subtitled: “In memory of my Father.” Although a accomplished player herself, she avoided playing as the featured artist in her piece. Instead, she always led as the maestro; and so the orchestra of the era followed her lead.

The composer aspired, as she stated, she “may foster a transformation”. Yet in the mid-1950s, the situation collapsed. Once officials became aware of her Black ancestry, she was forced to leave the land. Her British passport offered no defense, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, deeply ashamed as the magnitude of her inexperience dawned. “The realization was a hard one,” she stated. Compounding her disgrace was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her forced leaving from the country.

A Recurring Theme

Upon contemplating with these memories, I sensed a recurring theme. The account of being British until it’s revoked – which recalls Black soldiers who fought on behalf of the UK in the second world war and survived only to be denied their due compensation. Including those from Windrush,