🔗 Share this article

The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly bore the burden of her father’s reputation. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous British artists of the 1900s, Avril’s identity was cloaked in the lingering obscurity of bygone eras.

An Inaugural Recording

Not long ago, I contemplated these shadows as I made arrangements to make the first-ever recording of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. Featuring impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and valiant rhythms, her composition will provide audiences deep understanding into how the composer – a wartime composer born in 1903 – imagined her world as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about the past. It can take a while to adjust, to perceive forms as they really are, to tell reality from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to face her history for a while.

I deeply hoped Avril to be her father’s daughter. Partially, that held. The rustic British sounds of parental inspiration can be heard in several pieces, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the titles of her father’s compositions to see how he viewed himself as not only a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition and also a voice of the Black diaspora.

This was where parent and child appeared to part ways.

The United States evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his music as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the renowned institution, Samuel – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – turned toward his background. Once the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in 1897, the aspiring artist eagerly sought him out. He set the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the following year incorporated his poetry for an opera, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral composition that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an global success, especially with the Black community who felt shared pride as white America evaluated the composer by the excellence of his art as opposed to the his background.

Principles and Actions

Recognition did not reduce his beliefs. In 1900, he attended the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he met the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and saw a series of speeches, covering the mistreatment of the Black community there. He remained an advocate to his final days. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders such as this intellectual and this leader, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even discussed racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt while visiting to the presidential residence in the early 1900s. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so prominently as a creative artist that it will long be remembered.” He succumbed in 1912, at 37 years old. But what would Samuel have made of his child’s choice to be in the African nation in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician gives OK to apartheid system,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the appropriate course”, the composer stated Jet. Upon further questioning, she backtracked: she was not in favor with apartheid “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, guided by benevolent South Africans of all races”. If Avril had been more in tune to her family’s principles, or from the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about apartheid. Yet her life had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I hold a UK passport,” she stated, “and the officials did not inquire me about my background.” Therefore, with her “light” skin (according to the magazine), she moved alongside white society, supported by their praise for her renowned family member. She presented about her father’s music at the educational institution and directed the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in Johannesburg, programming the bold final section of her Piano Concerto, subtitled: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a confident pianist herself, she avoided playing as the lead performer in her work. Instead, she always led as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra performed under her direction.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “may foster a transformation”. However, by that year, things fell apart. After authorities learned of her mixed background, she could no longer stay the country. Her citizenship offered no defense, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the extent of her inexperience dawned. “This experience was a difficult one,” she lamented. Compounding her embarrassment was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her forced leaving from that nation.

A Recurring Theme

As I sat with these memories, I sensed a recurring theme. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who served for the British during the global conflict and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,