🔗 Share this article

Avril Coleridge-Taylor always experienced the weight of her father’s reputation. As the offspring of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the prominent UK composers of the 1900s, the composer’s identity was enveloped in the long shadows of history.

The First Recording

Not long ago, I sat with these shadows as I got ready to produce the inaugural album of the composer’s 1936 piano concerto. With its intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and confident beats, this piece will grant audiences deep understanding into how the composer – an artist in conflict originating from the early 1900s – imagined her reality as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about shadows. One needs patience to adapt, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to separate fact from distortion, and I had been afraid to face Avril’s past for some time.

I deeply hoped her to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, that held. The idyllic English tones of her father’s impact can be detected in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the headings of her parent’s works to realize how he heard himself as both a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition and also a voice of the African heritage.

At this point parent and child seemed to diverge.

White America judged Samuel by the mastery of his art rather than the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

While he was studying at the renowned institution, Samuel – the child of a Sierra Leonean father and a British mother – turned toward his background. At the time the poet of color the renowned Dunbar arrived in England in that era, the young musician eagerly sought him out. He adapted the poet’s African Romances into music and the next year used the poet’s words for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an global success, notably for African Americans who felt vicarious pride as the majority assessed his work by the excellence of his music as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Principles and Actions

Fame did not temper his activism. In 1900, he participated in the pioneering African conference in England where he made the acquaintance of the prominent scholar WEB Du Bois and witnessed a variety of discussions, covering the oppression of African people in South Africa. He was a campaigner to his final days. He kept connections with pioneers of civil rights including Du Bois and Booker T Washington, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even engaged in dialogue on matters of race with the US President while visiting to the presidential residence in that year. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so notably as a musician that it will long be remembered.” He succumbed in the early 20th century, in his thirties. However, how would Samuel have thought of his daughter’s decision to be in this country in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to S African Bias,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. The system “struck me as the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she didn’t agree with the system “in principle” and it “could be left to work itself out, overseen by well-meaning people of every background”. Had Avril been more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in segregated America, she could have hesitated about apartheid. Yet her life had protected her.

Identity and Naivety

“I hold a English document,” she said, “and the authorities did not inquire me about my ethnicity.” So, with her “fair” appearance (as described), she moved among the Europeans, supported by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She delivered a lecture about her family’s work at the Cape Town university and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in Johannesburg, programming the heroic third movement of her composition, subtitled: “In memory of my Father.” Although a accomplished player personally, she avoided playing as the featured artist in her concerto. Instead, she always led as the conductor; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

The composer aspired, as she stated, she “could introduce a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. Once officials learned of her African heritage, she could no longer stay the land. Her UK document failed to safeguard her, the diplomatic official recommended her departure or face arrest. She came home, deeply ashamed as the scale of her naivety dawned. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she stated. Compounding her disgrace was the release in 1955 of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Common Narrative

While I reflected with these legacies, I sensed a familiar story. The account of identifying as British until it’s challenged – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the English during the second world war and survived only to be not given their earned rewards. Including those from Windrush,