🔗 Share this article

The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always bore the weight of her father’s legacy. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the most famous British artists of the turn of the 20th century, the composer’s identity was enveloped in the lingering obscurity of bygone eras.

The First Recording

Earlier this year, I sat with these shadows as I got ready to produce the first-ever recording of the composer’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and confident beats, her composition will provide audiences deep understanding into how this artist – a composer during war originating from the early 1900s – conceived of her world as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

However about legacies. One needs patience to acclimate, to see shapes as they actually appear, to tell reality from distortion, and I was reluctant to confront her history for a while.

I earnestly desired her to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, she was. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be detected in numerous compositions, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the names of her father’s compositions to understand how he heard himself as not just a flag bearer of British Romantic style but a representative of the Black diaspora.

At this point Samuel and Avril seemed to diverge.

American society evaluated Samuel by the mastery of his art as opposed to the his ethnicity.

Family Background

While he was studying at the renowned institution, the composer – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – began embracing his heritage. Once the poet of color the renowned Dunbar visited the UK in that era, the aspiring artist eagerly sought him out. He set Dunbar’s African Romances into music and the following year adapted his verses for an opera, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral piece that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an global success, especially with the Black community who felt indirect honor as American society evaluated the composer by the quality of his compositions rather than the his race.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Fame did not reduce Samuel’s politics. In 1900, he was present at the initial Pan African gathering in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the prominent scholar this influential figure and witnessed a variety of discussions, including on the oppression of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner throughout his life. He kept connections with trailblazers for equality including this intellectual and this leader, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on issues of racism with the American leader on a trip to the White House in 1904. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he made his mark so prominently as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in that year, aged 37. But what would Samuel have thought of his child’s choice to work in the African nation in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician shows support to apartheid system,” declared a title in the Black American publication Jet magazine. The system “appeared to me the appropriate course”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she did not support with apartheid “in principle” and it “could be left to resolve itself, directed by benevolent people of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more in tune to her parent’s beliefs, or born in segregated America, she might have thought twice about this system. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I hold a English document,” she stated, “and the government agents did not inquire me about my race.” So, with her “porcelain-white” complexion (as Jet put it), she moved among the Europeans, buoyed up by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She gave a talk about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and directed the broadcasting ensemble in the city, including the heroic third movement of her composition, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a confident pianist personally, she never played as the lead performer in her concerto. Rather, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the orchestra of the era followed her lead.

She desired, in her own words, she “could introduce a shift”. But by 1954, the situation collapsed. When government agents learned of her mixed background, she had to depart the nation. Her British passport offered no defense, the UK representative advised her to leave or be jailed. She came home, deeply ashamed as the scale of her inexperience dawned. “This experience was a painful one,” she stated. Increasing her humiliation was the release in 1955 of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from the country.

A Recurring Theme

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I sensed a known narrative. The narrative of being British until you’re not – one that calls to mind troops of color who defended the English in the second world war and lived only to be denied their due compensation. Along with the Windrush era,