🔗 Share this article

This talented musician always experienced the pressure of her family reputation. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the prominent English artists of the 1900s, the composer’s reputation was cloaked in the deep shadows of bygone eras.

The First Recording

Earlier this year, I reflected on these memories as I got ready to record the first-ever recording of the composer’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. With its intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will provide music lovers fascinating insight into how this artist – a wartime composer who entered the world in 1903 – imagined her existence as a artist with mixed heritage.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about the past. It requires time to acclimate, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to distinguish truth from misinterpretation, and I felt hesitant to confront the composer’s background for some time.

I had so wanted Avril to be her father’s daughter. In some ways, she was. The idyllic English tones of Samuel’s influence can be detected in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only examine the names of her father’s compositions to see how he heard himself as not just a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition and also a representative of the African heritage.

This was where parent and child appeared to part ways.

White America assessed the composer by the mastery of his compositions rather than the his racial background.

Family Background

During his studies at the prestigious music college, the composer – the son of a Sierra Leonean father and a Caucasian parent – began embracing his African roots. At the time the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar arrived in England in that era, the young musician was keen to meet him. He adapted Dunbar’s African Romances into music and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral work that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an global success, particularly among the Black community who felt indirect honor as American society judged Samuel by the brilliance of his compositions rather than the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Fame did not reduce Samuel’s politics. In 1900, he attended the pioneering African conference in London where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual this influential figure and saw a series of speeches, covering the subjugation of African people in South Africa. He remained an advocate until the end. He maintained ties with early civil rights leaders like the scholar and Booker T Washington, gave addresses on equality for all, and even discussed racial problems with the US President during an invitation to the White House in that year. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he established his reputation so prominently as a composer that it will long be remembered.” He died in the early 20th century, at 37 years old. Yet how might her father have reacted to his child’s choice to be in the African nation in the that decade?

Issues and Stance

“Offspring of Renowned Musician gives OK to S African Bias,” ran a headline in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “seems to me the correct approach”, the composer stated Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she didn’t agree with apartheid “in principle” and it “ought to be permitted to resolve itself, guided by good-intentioned residents of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about the policy. However, existence had protected her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I possess a UK passport,” she remarked, “and the authorities failed to question me about my ethnicity.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” complexion (according to the magazine), she floated alongside white society, lifted by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She presented about her family’s work at the University of Cape Town and led the national orchestra in that location, programming the inspiring part of her composition, subtitled: “In memory of my Father.” Although a confident pianist herself, she did not perform as the featured artist in her work. Rather, she always led as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era played under her baton.

Avril hoped, as she stated, she “might bring a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities discovered her African heritage, she had to depart the nation. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner advised her to leave or face arrest. She went back to the UK, deeply ashamed as the extent of her innocence became clear. “The realization was a hard one,” she expressed. Adding to her embarrassment was the 1955 publication of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from that nation.

A Common Narrative

While I reflected with these shadows, I perceived a recurring theme. The story of being British until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind troops of color who defended the British throughout the second world war and lived only to be denied their due compensation. Along with the Windrush era,