Stepping from Obscurity: The Reasons Avril Coleridge-Taylor Warrants to Be Listened To

Avril Coleridge-Taylor always bore the pressure of her family heritage. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the prominent UK musicians of the early 20th century, the composer’s identity was cloaked in the long shadows of the past.

The First Recording

Earlier this year, I sat with these memories as I got ready to record the world premiere recording of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. Featuring impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, her composition will provide audiences valuable perspective into how she – a wartime composer who entered the world in 1903 – envisioned her reality as a artist with mixed heritage.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about legacies. It requires time to adapt, to perceive forms as they truly exist, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to face her history for some time.

I had so wanted Avril to be her father’s daughter. Partially, she was. The rustic British sounds of parental inspiration can be detected in many of her works, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only review the headings of her father’s compositions to understand how he viewed himself as not only a champion of English Romanticism but a voice of the African heritage.

This was where Samuel and Avril began to differ.

The United States evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his music rather than the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the renowned institution, the composer – the son of a Sierra Leonean father and a Caucasian parent – began embracing his African roots. Once the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in that era, the aspiring artist eagerly sought him out. He composed Dunbar’s African Romances into music and the following year incorporated his poetry for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral work that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an global success, particularly among African Americans who felt indirect honor as white America judged Samuel by the excellence of his music rather than the his race.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Recognition did not temper Samuel’s politics. In 1900, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in England where he made the acquaintance of the Black American thinker this influential figure and witnessed a range of talks, such as the subjugation of African people in South Africa. He was a campaigner to his final days. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders such as this intellectual and Booker T Washington, delivered his own speeches on equality for all, and even discussed issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt during an invitation to the presidential residence in that year. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he made his mark so high as a creative artist that it will endure.” He succumbed in 1912, in his thirties. But what would the composer have made of his daughter’s decision to travel to the African nation in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer expresses approval to S African Bias,” appeared as a heading in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the correct approach”, she informed Jet. Upon further questioning, she revised her statement: she didn’t agree with apartheid “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, overseen by good-intentioned residents of all races”. Had Avril been more aligned to her family’s principles, or from the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about this system. But life had shielded her.

Identity and Naivety

“I hold a UK passport,” she said, “and the government agents failed to question me about my background.” So, with her “fair” complexion (as described), she floated among the Europeans, buoyed up by their praise for her late father. She presented about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, including the bold final section of her concerto, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a skilled pianist herself, she never played as the lead performer in her work. Instead, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the orchestra of the era performed under her direction.

She desired, as she stated, she “may foster a shift”. Yet in the mid-1950s, the situation collapsed. After authorities learned of her mixed background, she could no longer stay the nation. Her UK document didn’t protect her, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, feeling great shame as the extent of her innocence became clear. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she stated. Compounding her humiliation was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these memories, I felt a known narrative. The account of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the UK in the second world war and lived only to be denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,